"And then her mother--" he added, as if involuntarily.
"Her mother has never visited me," Mrs. Quentin finished for him.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Mrs. Fenno has the scope of a wax doll.
Her rule of conduct is taken from her grandmother's sampler."
"But the daughter is so modern--and yet--"
"The result is the same? Not exactly. _She_ admires you--oh,
immensely!" He replaced the bronze and turned to his mother with a
smile. "Aren't you on some hospital committee together? What
especially strikes her is your way of doing good. She says
philanthropy is not a line of conduct, but a state of mind--and it
appears that you are one of the elect."
As, in the vague diffusion of physical pain, relief seems to come
with the acuter pang of a single nerve, Mrs. Quentin felt herself
suddenly eased by a rush of anger against the girl. "If she loved
you--" she began.
His gesture checked her. "I'm not asking you to get her to do that."
The two were again silent, facing each other in the disarray of a
common catastrophe--as though their thoughts, at the summons of
danger, had rushed naked into action. Mrs. Quentin, at this
revealing moment, saw for the first time how many elements of her
son's character had seemed comprehensible simply because they were
familiar: as, in reading a foreign language, we take the meaning of
certain words for granted till the context corrects us. Often as in
a given case, her maternal musings had figured his conduct, she now
found herself at a loss to forecast it; and with this failure of
intuition came a sense of the subserviency which had hitherto made
her counsels but the anticipation of his wish.
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