ct ideas about
parents and children, there stood looking at her out of their clear
loving eyes, Paul and Elly and little Mark, alive, there, a part of her;
not only themselves but her children; not only her children but
themselves; human life which she and Neale had created out of the stuff
of the universe. They looked at her and in their regard was the clear
distillation of the innumerable past hours when they had looked at her
with love and trust.

At the sight of them, her own children, her heart swelled and opened
wide to a conception of something greater and deeper in motherhood than
she had had; but which she could have if she could deserve it; something
so wide and sun-flooded that the old selfish, possessive,
never-satisfied ache which had called itself love withered away, its
power to hurt and poison her gone.

She had no words for this . . . she could not even try to understand it.
It was as solemn a birth-hour to her, as the hour when she had first
heard the cry of her new-born babies . . . she was one mother then, she
had become another mother now. She turned to bless the torment of
bitter, doubting questioning of what she had called mother-love, which
had forced her forward blindly struggling, till she found this
divination of a greater possibility.

She had been trying to span the unfathomable with a mean and grasping
desire. Now she knew what she must try to do; to give up the lesser and
receive the greater.

* * * * *

This passed and left her, looking straight before her at the flickering
shadows, leaping among the dusky corners of the dark slant-ceilinged
room. The old clock struck three in the hall behind her.

She felt tired now, as she had after the other travail which had given
her her children, and leaned her head on her hand. Where did she
herself, her own personal self come in, with all this? It was always a
call to more effort which came. To get the great good things of life how
much you had to give! How much of what seemed dearly yourself, you had
to leave behind as you went forward! Her childhood was startlingly
called up by this old garret, where nothing had changed: she could still
see herself, running about there, happily absorbed in the vital
trivialities of her ten years. She had not forgotten them, she knew
exactly the thrill felt by that shadowy little girl as she leaned over
the old chest yonder, and pulled out the deep-fringed shawl and quilted