"

Marvel hesitated. Her air of detachment was complete.

"You never tried to make me love you, mother. Even love goes by a kind
of logic. Domestic life gives you one kind of reward; public life
another kind. You get the kind you choose, I take it, and no other. If
you want love, you must choose the love-bringing kind," said this
austere young judge. "And I've found out another thing by myself. You
love ten times as much when you have served with hands and feet as
well as brain. I do not know why. I only know you do. {208} If--if I
love you at all, mother, it is because of the work I have done for you
here--in making it like home!"

Clarissa bowed her head on her hands, in a bitterness made absolute.
This child of hers was her own child. What right, indeed, had she to
expect self-sacrifice, tenderness, cherishing, from the flesh of her
flesh? That which she had given was rendered unto her again in
overflowing measure, and beholding she saw that it was just.

Marvel, standing at the window in the sunshine, a little excited by
her own eloquence and wondering at it still, had no conception of the
havoc she had worked. Indeed, she was innocent of the knowledge that
any one, least of all herself, had the power to move her mother
greatly. She assumed, after the careless fashion of {209} youth, that
her elders were indifferent and unemotional. Suddenly, she heard an
unfamiliar and terrifying sound. Her mother was sobbing with harsh,
rending sobs, tearless and terrible.

Marvel turned in quick alarm and stood confused before this anguish of
her own inflicting. Clarissa's very soul seemed sobbing, and her
daughter did not know how to bear the sound.

The girl wrung her hands helplessly. Something struck her heart and
quivered down her nerves. Then, as she watched this woman, so like,
yet so unlike herself, all at once--she understood! She was suffering
with every painful breath her mother drew. In the heart of her heart
she felt them. They two were bound together there. It was even as
Evelyn had told her,--Evelyn, the beloved, whose truth had never
failed her yet! The primal tie {210} that draws God to his worlds
still holds the woman and her child. It was a wonder and a miracle
unspeakable--but it was true. Throbbing and palpable, she felt the tie.

It was as if her eyelids were anointed, and all the deep and secret
things of life lay clear. Ah, she had not known the half before! How
shallow and complacent she must have