scovered that she could become as hard as iron
where the difference related to Harry.

"You are unjust, Oliver. I think you ought to see it," she said in a
voice which she kept by an effort from breaking.

"I'll never see it, Jinny," and some dogged impulse to hurt her more
made him add, "It's for Harry's sake as well as yours that I'm
speaking."

"For Harry's sake? Oh, you don't mean--you can't really mean that you
think I'm not doing the best for my child, Oliver?"

A year ago Oliver would have surrendered at once before the terror in
her eyes; but in those twelve long months of effort, of hope, of balked
ambition, of bitter questioning, and of tragic disillusionment, a new
quality had developed in his character, and the generous sympathy of
youth had hardened at thirty-four to the cautious cynicism of
middle-age. It is doubtful if even he himself realized how transient
such a state must be to a nature whose hidden springs were moved so
easily by the mere action of change--by the effect of any alteration in
the objects that surrounded him. Because the enthusiasm of youth was
exhausted at the minute, it seemed to him that he had lost it forever.
And to Virginia, who saw but one thing at a time and to whom that one
thing was always the present instant, it seemed that the firm ground
upon which she trod had crumbled beneath her.

"Well, if you want the truth," he said quietly (as if any mother ever
wanted the truth about such a matter), "I think you make a mistake to
spoil Harry as you do."

"But," she brought out the words with a pathetic quiver, "I treat him
just as I do the others, and you never say anything about my spoiling
them."

"Oh, the others are girls. Girls aren't so easily ruined somehow. They
don't get such hard knocks later on, so it makes less difference about
them."

As she sat there in bed, propped up on her elbow, which trembled
violently against the pillows, with her cambric nightdress, trimmed only
with a narrow band of crocheted lace, opened at her slender throat, and
her hair, which was getting thin at the temples, drawn unbecomingly back
from her forehead, she looked, indeed, as Oliver had thought, "at least
ten years older than Abby." Though she was not yet thirty, the delicate,
flower-like bloom of her beauty was already beginning to fade. The
spirit which had animated her yesterday appeared to have gone out of her
now. He thought how lovely she had been at twenty when he saw her for