er moods of fierce rebellion or of
sudden self-reproach for not having given Bruce more while he lived. And in
such hours her father tried to comfort her with poor success.

"Remember, child, I'm with you, and I know how it feels," he said. "I went
through it all myself: When your mother died--"

"But mother was so much older!" He looked at his daughter compassionately.

"How old are you?" he inquired.

"Thirty-six."

"Your mother was thirty-nine," he replied. And at that Edith turned and
stared at him, bewildered, shocked, brought face to face with a new and
momentous fact in her life.

"Mother only my age when she died?"

"Yes," said Roger gently, "only three years older." With a twinge of pain
he noticed two quite visible streaks of gray in his daughter's soft blonde
hair. "And she felt as you do now--as though she were just starting out.
And I felt the same way, my dear. If I'm not mistaken, everyone does. You
still feel young--but the new generation is already growing up--and you can
feel yourself being pushed on. And it is hard--it is very hard." Clumsily
he took her hand. "Don't let yourself drop out," he said. "Be as your
mother would have been if she had been left instead of me. Go straight on
with your children."

To this note he could feel her respond. And at first, as he felt what a
fight she was making, Roger glorified her pluck. As he watched her with her
children at table, smiling at their talk with an evident effort to enter
in, and again with her baby snug in her lap while she read bedtime stories
to Bob and little Tad at her side, he kept noticing the resemblance between
his daughter and his wife. How close were these two members of his family
drawing together now, one of them living, the other dead.

But later, as the weeks wore on, she began to plan for her children. She
planned precisely how to fit them all into the house in town, she planned
the hours for their meals, for their going alone or with the nurse or a
maid to their different private schools, to music lessons, to dancing
school and uptown to the park to play. She planned their fall clothes and
she planned their friends. And there came to her father occasional moods of
anxiety. He remembered Bruce's grim remarks about those "simple" schools
and clothes, the kind that always cost the most. And he began to realize
what Bruce's existence must have been. For scarcely ever in their talks did
Edith speak of anything outside of her famil