the weather--or my age.
I suppose I shall get over it."

"Of course you will get over it--but you mustn't let it grow on you. You
mustn't be too much alone."

"How can I help it? Oliver will be away almost all winter, and when he
is at home, he is so absorbed in his work that he sometimes doesn't
speak for days. Of course, it isn't his fault," she added hastily; "it
is the only way he can write."

"And you're alone now for the first time for twenty-five years. That's
why you feel it so keenly."

The look of unselfish goodness which made Virginia's face almost
beautiful at times passed like an edge of light across her eyes and
mouth. "Don't worry about me, Susan. I'll get used to it."

"You will, dear, but it isn't right. I wish Harry could have stayed in
Dinwiddie. He would have been such a comfort to you."

"But I wouldn't have had him do it! The boy is so brilliant. He has a
future before him. Already he has had several articles accepted by the
magazines"--her face shone--"and I hope that he will some day be as
successful as Oliver has been without going through the long struggle."

"Can't you go to England to see him in the summer?"

"That's what I want to do." It was touching to see how her animation and
interest revived when she began talking of Harry. "And when Oliver's
play is put on in February, he has promised to take me to New York for
the first night."

"I am glad of that. But, meanwhile, you mustn't sit at home and think
too much, Jinny. It isn't good for you. Can't you find an interest? If
you would only take up reading again. You used to be fond of it."

"I know, but one gets out of the habit. I gave it up after the children
came, when there was so much that was really important for me to do, and
now, to save my life, I can't get interested in a book except for an
hour or two at a time. I'm always stopping to ask myself if I'm not
neglecting something, just as I used to do while the children were
little. You see, I'm not a clever woman like you. I was made just to be
a wife and mother, and nothing else."

"But you're obliged to be something else now. You are only forty-five.
There may be forty more years ahead of you, and you can't go on being a
mother every minute of your time. Even if you have grandchildren, they
won't be like your own. You can't slave over them in the way you used to
do over yours. The girls' husbands and Harry's wife would have something
to say about it."

"Do you know,