plain to be seen. If I'd been a cup of coffee without any coffee in
it, he'd have been stirring me. I know he would. He was like that.

"Father. _Father!_" I had to speak twice, before he heard me. "Do you
really mean that you would like to try again?" I asked.

"Eh? What?" And just the way he turned and looked at me showed how
many _miles_ he'd been away from me.

"Try it again, you know--what you said," I reminded him.

"Oh, that!" Such a funny look came to his face, half ashamed, half
vexed. "I'm afraid I _have_ been--talking, my dear."

"Yes, but would you?" I persisted.

He shook his head; then, with such an oh-that-it-could-be! smile, he
said:

"Of course;--we all wish that we could go back and do it over
again--differently. But we never can."

"I know; like the cloth that's been cut up into the dress," I nodded.

"Cloth? Dress?" frowned Father.

"Yes, that Mother told me about," I explained. Then I told him the
story that Mother had told me--how you couldn't go back and be
unmarried, just as you were before, any more than you could put the
cloth back on the shelf, all neatly folded in a great long web after
it had been cut up into a dress.

"Did your mother say--that?" asked Father. His voice was husky, and
his eyes were turned away, but they were not looking at the dancers.
He was listening to me now. I knew that, and so I spoke quick, before
he could get absent-minded again.

"Yes, but, Father, you can go back, in this case, and so can Mother,
'cause you both want to," I hurried on, almost choking in my anxiety
to get it all out quickly. "And Mother said it was _her_ fault. I
heard her."

"_Her_ fault!" I could see that Father did not quite understand, even
yet.

"Yes, yes, just as you said it was yours--about all those things at
the first, you know, when--when she was a spirit of youth beating
against the bars."

Father turned square around and faced me.

"Mary, what are you talking about?" he asked then. And I'd have been
scared of his voice if it hadn't been for the great light that was
shining in his eyes.

But I looked into his eyes, and wasn't scared; and I told him
everything, every single thing--all about how Mother had cried over
the little blue dress that day in the trunk-room, and how she had
shown the tarnished lace and said that _she_ had tarnished the
happiness of him and of herself and of me; and that it was all her
fault; that she was thoughtless and willful and exacting