her lord. He was so wrong when he
died. She could not bear it, that he had never lived, never
really become himself. And he had been her lord! Strange, it all
had been! Why had he been her lord? He seemed now so far off, so
without bearing on her.

"Which did you, grandmother?"

"What?"

"Like best."

"I liked them both. I married the first when I was quite a
girl. Then I loved your grandfather when I was a woman. There is
a difference."

They were silent for a time.

"Did you cry when my first grandfather died?" the child
asked.

Lydia Brangwen rocked herself on the bed, thinking aloud.

"When we came to England, he hardly ever spoke, he was too
much concerned to take any notice of anybody. He grew thinner
and thinner, till his cheeks were hollow and his mouth stuck
out. He wasn't handsome any more. I knew he couldn't bear being
beaten, I thought everything was lost in the world. Only I had
your mother a baby, it was no use my dying.

"He looked at me with his black eyes, almost as if he hated
me, when he was ill, and said, 'It only wanted this. It only
wanted that I should leave you and a young child to starve in
this London.' I told him we should not starve. But I was young,
and foolish, and frightened, which he knew.

"He was bitter, and he never gave way. He lay beating his
brains, to see what he could do. 'I don't know what you will
do,' he said. 'I am no good, I am a failure from beginning to
end. I cannot even provide for my wife and child!'

"But you see, it was not for him to provide for us. My life
went on, though his stopped, and I married your grandfather.

"I ought to have known, I ought to have been able to say to
him: 'Don't be so bitter, don't die because this has failed. You
are not the beginning and the end.' But I was too young, he had
never let me become myself, I thought he was truly the beginning
and the end. So I let him take all upon himself. Yet all did not
depend on him. Life must go on, and I must marry your
grandfather, and have your Uncle Tom, and your Uncle Fred. We
cannot take so much upon ourselves."

The child's heart beat fast as she listened to these things.
She could not understand, but she seemed to feel far-off things.
It gave her a deep, joyous thrill, to know she hailed from far
off, from Poland, and that dark-bearded impressive man. Strange,
her antecedents were, and she felt fate on either side of her
terrible.

Almost every day, Ursula saw her grandmoth