oment something occurred to
her. "I mustn't put myself in your son's way."

Mrs. Gereth gave a dry, flat laugh. "You're prodigious! But how shall
you possibly be more out of it? Owen and I--" She didn't finish her
sentence.

"That's your great feeling about _him_," Fleda said; "but how, after
what has happened, can it be his about you?"

Mrs. Gereth hesitated. "How do you know what has happened? You don't
know what I said to him."

"Yesterday?"

"Yesterday."

They looked at each other with a long, deep gaze. Then, as Mrs. Gereth
seemed again about to speak, the girl, closing her eyes, made a gesture
of strong prohibition. "Don't tell me!"

"Merciful powers, how you worship him!" Mrs. Gereth wonderingly moaned.
It was, for Fleda, the shake that made the cup overflow. She had a
pause, that of the child who takes time to know that he responds to an
accident with pain; then, dropping again on the sofa, she broke into
tears. They were beyond control, they came in long sobs, which for a
moment Mrs. Gereth, almost with an air of indifference, stood hearing
and watching. At last Mrs. Gereth too sank down again. Mrs. Gereth
soundlessly, wearily wept.

XXI

"It looks just like Waterbath; but, after all, we bore _that_ together:"
these words formed part of a letter in which, before the 17th, Mrs.
Gereth, writing from disfigured Ricks, named to Fleda the day on which
she would be expected to arrive there on a second visit. "I sha'n't, for
a long time to come," the missive continued, "be able to receive any one
who may _like_ it, who would try to smooth it down, and me with it; but
there are always things you and I can comfortably hate together, for
you're the only person who comfortably understands. You don't understand
quite everything, but of all my acquaintance you're far away the least
stupid. For action you're no good at all; but action is over, for me,
forever, and you will have the great merit of knowing, when I'm brutally
silent, what I shall be thinking about. Without setting myself up for
your equal, I dare say I shall also know what are your own thoughts.
Moreover, with nothing else but my four walls, you'll at any rate be a
bit of furniture. For that, you know, a little, I've always taken
you--quite one of my best finds. So come, if possible, on the 15th."

The position of a bit of furniture was one that Fleda could
conscientiously accept, and she by no means insisted on so high a place
in the list