"You're not always sure, are you, of what you really feel?"
"Lots of people, I think. This--this may be my farewell sermon, Terry, so be attentive!"
"I won't, then, and I'm not going to preach. I only want to tell you to go on taking care of them all for me. You do it better than I ever did, and it has been a sacrifice."
Had it? Theresa looked back through the months. What would she have done with them if they had been hers to use? The thought of the immortal poem rose up in a cloud of dust. It would never be anything more than dust, offensive to eyes and nose, choking her. With a defiant movement of the arms she scattered it, yet still its odour remained, mocking her with its dry offence. She spurned the idea of herself as poet, her head was unaccountably humbled, yet through it there darted swiftly the vision of herself as novelist. It was a vision easier to live with, and she welcomed it, straightening her back.
"There's Grace," her mother was saying softly; "she is so pretty. Don't let her marry the wrong person, Terry."
"She's rather clever at dodging the mistakes. She has a lot of commonsense. I'm much more likely to do something insane, in spite of my looks! Being plain makes one so independent!"
"You're not plain, dear. Father thinks you're beautiful."
"Oh, Father!" The old allegiance and the new scorn were fairly mingled.
"Yes," said Nancy, twisting her lips, "it is rather like that, I know. And there's Uncle George. He's much nicer near than at a distance. Theresa, do you mind him very much?"
"I rather like him," she answered, reddening.
"Aren't we being good?" said Nancy gaily. "And you'll keep Bessie. I know she's not much use, but she's a friend. I shouldn't like you to have a stranger. And--and there's Father." Tears dropped straight and unheeded into her lap. "Theresa, he loves you so much, and he'll need you. Be kind to him. He's so unhappy when you're not."
The appeal could only throw his treachery into black relief, but in an illuminating flash that went violently through her head, and left her weak and giddy, she thought she understood it, understood all things, and she promised, weeping, too, that she would care for him.
Her mother's gentleness stole through Theresa and stayed there: she felt in herself a largeness of forgiveness that astonished her, and she looked on her father without rancour, with the wide gaze, she thought, of one who sees beyond the flesh. And the mood, unnatural, but not false, imposed by another's tenderness, lasted, uninterrupted, for the short time before her mother died. Theresa was glad that inward peace, as well as that outer one of a June night, surrounded the pale, still figure on the bed, as she gave the little sighing breath which lightly sent her spirit across the border, glad that she felt no resentment at her father's tears. She had time to think these things before there came over her a terrible quiet which was not peace but desolation, wherein worlds broke God's rules and changed their course, and, amidst their bewildered going, she thought her mother tried to find a place. Her discarded lodging lay in the bed still bearing the imprint of her spirit, but what was essentially she was racing perilously among uncertain worlds. She steadied herself. She refused to visualise a thing she could not understand, and she found strength. The wandering worlds dropped back into their circuits, she heard the dreadful catch and outlet of her father's breathing, and, as though this were but part of her daily task, she stroked her mother's cold, soft hands, and touched a little wavering lock of hair that had fallen across her brow.