!" whispered Malvina after a long silence.

"What, mamma?"

"If I could--if I had the right--" Both were silent.

"What, mamma?"

"If I could believe in spite of--"

The gilded and artistic clock ticked among the pinks and lilies:
tick-tack, tick-tack.

"What is it, mamma?"

"A cake, Ira!"

As Irene took a cake from the silver basket with her trembling
hand, she cried, with glad laughter:

"At last you will eat even a cake! You have changed immensely,
mamma. I cannot call you now as I once did, a little glutton,
since for some time past you eat so little that it is nearly
nothing."

Malvina smiled fondly at the name which on a time her daughter
had given her jestingly, and Irene continued in the same tone:

"Remember, mamma, how you and I, with one small assistant in
Cara, ate whole baskets of cakes, or big, big boxes of
confectionery. Now that is past. I notice this long time that you
eat almost nothing, and that you dress richly only because you
must do so. At times, were it possible, you would put on
haircloth instead of rich silks, would you not? Have I guessed
rightly?"

While a faint blush covered her forehead and cheeks again,
Malvina answered:

"Rightly."

Irene grew thoughtful; without raising her eyes to her mother she
inquired in a low voice:

"What is the cause of this?"

"Returning currents of life are the cause," answered Malvina
after a rather long silence, and she continued, thoughtfully:
"You see, my child, currents of a river when once they have
passed never come back again, but currents of life come hack. My
early youth was poor, as you know, calm, laborious, brightened by
ideals, from which I have deviated much! That was long ago, but
it happened. In life so many years pass sometimes, that events
which precede those years seem a dream, but they are real and
come back to us."

Irene listened to this hesitating, low conversation with drooping
eyelids and forehead resting on her hand. She made no answer.
Malvina, sunk in thought, was silent also.

A few minutes later the tea things vanished from the table,
removed without a sound almost, and borne out by the young
waiting-maid.

With eyelids still drooping, as if she were finishing an idea
circling stubbornly in her head, Irene said with pensive lips:

"A haircloth!" She rose then, and, suppressing a yawn, said: "I
am sleepy. Good-night, mamma, dear!" She placed a brief kiss on
her mother's hand: "Shall I call Kosalia?"