anet had sought refuge, wistfully, in the commonplace. And when the meal
was ready she strove to eat, though food had become repulsive.

"You must take something, mother," she said.

"I don't feel as if I ever wanted to eat anything again," she replied.

"I know," said Janet, "but you've got to." And she put some of the cold
meat, left over from Sunday's dinner, on Hannah's plate. Hannah took up a
fork, and laid it down again. Suddenly she said:--"You saw Lise?"

"Yes," said Janet.

"Where is she?"

"In a house--in Boston."

"One of--those houses?"

"I--I don't know," said Janet. "I think so."

"You went there?"

"Mr. Tiernan went with me."

"She wouldn't come home?"

"Not--not just now, mother."

"You left her there, in that place? You didn't make her come home?"

The sudden vehemence of this question, the shrill note of reproach in
Hannah's voice that revealed, even more than the terrible inertia from
which she had emerged, the extent of her suffering, for the instant left
Janet utterly dismayed. "Oh mother!" she exclaimed. "I tried--I--I
couldn't."

Hannah pushed back her chair.

"I'll go to her, I'll make her come. She's disgraced us, but I'll make
her. Where is she? Where is the house?"

Janet, terrified, seized her mother's arm. Then she said:--"Lise isn't
there any more--she's gone away."

"Away and you let her go away? You let your sister go away and be a--a
woman of the town? You never loved her--you never had any pity for her."

Tears sprang into Janet's eyes--tears of pity mingled with anger. The
situation had grown intolerable! Yet how could she tell Hannah where Lise
was!

"You haven't any right to say that, mother!" she cried. "I did my best.
She wouldn't come. I--I can't tell you where she's gone, but she promised
to write, to send me her address."

"Lise" Hannah's cry seemed like the uncomprehending whimper of a stricken
child, and then a hidden cadence made itself felt, a cadence revealing to
Janet with an eloquence never before achieved the mystery of mother love,
and by some magic of tone was evoked a new image of Lise--of Lise as she
must be to Hannah. No waywardness, no degradation or disgrace could
efface it. The infant whom Hannah had clutched to her breast, the woman,
her sister, whom Janet had seen that day were one--immutably one. This,
then, was what it meant to be a mother! All the years of deadening hope
had not availed to kill the craving--even in this withered bo