irl
that she 'got together with' was really like her."

"I don't believe there was any other girl. I never thought there was
more than one."

"There seemed to be two styles and two grades of culture, such as they
were."

"Oh, she could easily imitate two manners. She must have been a
clever girl," Mrs. Verrian said, with that admiration for any sort of
cleverness in her sex which even very good women cannot help feeling.

"Well, perhaps she was punished enough for both the characters she
assumed," Verrian said, with a smile that was not gay.

"Don't think about her!" his mother returned, with a perception of his
mood. "I'm only thankful that she's out of our lives in every sort of
way."

VI.

Verrian said nothing, but he reflected with a sort of gloomy amusement
how impossible it was for any woman, even a woman so wide-minded and
high-principled as his mother, to escape the personal view of all things
and all persons which women take. He tacitly noted the fact, as the
novelist notes whatever happens or appears to him, but he let the
occasion drop out of his mind as soon as he could after it had dropped
out of his talk.

The night when the last number of his story came to them in the
magazine, and was already announced as a book, he sat up with his mother
celebrating, as he said, and exulting in the future as well as the past.
They had a little supper, which she cooked for him in a chafing-dish, in
the dining-room of the tiny apartment where they lived together, and
she made some coffee afterwards, to carry off the effect of the Newburg
lobster. Perhaps because there was nothing to carry off the effect of
the coffee, he heard her, through the partition of their rooms, stirring
restlessly after he had gone to bed, and a little later she came to his
door, which she set ajar, to ask, "Are you awake, Philip?"

"You seem to be, mother," he answered, with an amusement at her question
which seemed not to have imparted itself to her when she came in and
stood beside his bed in her dressing-gown.

"You don't think we have judged her too harshly, Philip?"

"Do you, mother?"

"No, I think we couldn't be too severe in a thing like that. She
probably thought you were like some of the other story-writers; she
couldn't feel differences, shades. She pretended to be taken with the
circumstances of your work, but she had to do that if she wanted to fool
you. Well, she has got her come-uppings, as she would probably s