Viewed in this light, Miss Fenno was certainly very strong: there
was an unmistakable ring of finality in the tone with which she
declared,
"It's impossible."
Mrs. Quentin's answer veiled the least shade of feminine resentment.
"I told Alan that, where he had failed, there was no chance of my
making an impression."
Hope Fenno laid on her visitor's an almost reverential hand. "Dear
Mrs. Quentin, it's the impression you make that confirms the
impossibility."
Mrs. Quentin waited a moment: she was perfectly aware that, where
her feelings were concerned, her sense of humor was not to be relied
on. "Do I make such an odious impression?" she asked at length, with
a smile that seemed to give the girl her choice of two meanings.
"You make such a beautiful one! It's too beautiful--it obscures my
judgment."
Mrs. Quentin looked at her thoughtfully. "Would it be permissible, I
wonder, for an older woman to suggest that, at your age, it isn't
always a misfortune to have what one calls one's judgment
temporarily obscured?"
Miss Fenno flushed. "I try not to judge others--"
"You judge Alan."
"Ah, _he_ is not others," she murmured, with an accent that touched
the older woman.
"You judge his mother."
"I don't; I don't!"
Mrs. Quentin pressed her point. "You judge yourself, then, as you
would be in my position--and your verdict condemns me."
"How can you think it? It's because I appreciate the difference in
our point of view that I find it so difficult to defend myself--"
"Against what?"
"The temptation to imagine that I might be as _you_ are--feeling as
I do.
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