was, she spoke like a
disappointed child, and her son looked at her with wonder.

"I don't understand how a woman can care so much about seeing pretty
dresses," he said, not unkindly, but with a slight inflection of
amused scorn.

"No," said his mother, "I don't suppose you can, dear. I don't
suppose any man can." And it was as if she regarded him from feminine
heights. At that moment the longing, never quite stilled in her
breast, for a daughter, a child of her own kind, who would have
understood her, who would have gone with her to this wedding, and
been to the full as disappointed as she was to have missed it, was
strong upon her. She was very fond of her son, but at the moment she
saw him with alien eyes. "No, dear, I don't suppose you can
understand," she repeated; "you are a man."

"If you had really cared so much, mother--if I had understood," he
said, gently, "you might have gone. You could have gone with the
Egglestons."

"There was no reason why we could not have gone by ourselves," said
she, "and sat with the invited guests, where we could have seen
everything nicely, since we had an invitation."

Anderson opened his mouth to tell his mother of the true source of
the invitation; then he hesitated. He had a theory that it was
foolish, in view of the large alloy of bitterness in the world, to
destroy the slightest element of sweet by a word. It was quite
evident that his mother, for some occult reason, took pleasure in the
invitation. Why destroy it? So he repeated that she might have gone,
had she cared so much; and feeling that he was showing a needless
humility in his own scruples, he added that he would have gone with
her. Then his mother declared that she did not, after all, really
care, that it was a warm night and she would have been obliged to
dress, and after fanning herself a little while, went in the house
and to bed, leaving him marvelling at the ways of women. The problem
as to whether his mother had really wished very much to go to the
wedding and whether he had been selfish and foolish in opposing her
wish or not, rather agitated him for some minutes. Then he gave it
up, and relegated women to a place with the fourth dimension on the
shelf of his understanding. The moon was now fairly aloft, sailing
triumphant in a fleet of pale gold and rosy clouds. The night was
very hot, the night insects were shrieking in their persistent
dissonances all over the street. Shadows waved and trembled over