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230 ; so was your mother; we should have been jealous of any woman. We didn't like the girl you brought us; we thought, 'It's our jealousy that makes us not like her. She's Addie's wife; she's taking our boy from us.' We had no right to think like that. We tried to stifle our jealousy. We received Mathilde, hoping, almost knowing for certain, that you were finding your own happiness in her, because you always knew your mind. . . . You didn't know it in your own case. . . . You knew everything so positively in ours. . . . You also knew so positively, so plainly, that the profession which I tried to urge upon you was not the thing for you: you found your own vocation. You were a small boy; and you know it all so clearly and positively. . . . When you grew up and became a man, you no longer knew things. Isn't that so? . . . Why should your fate be the same as your father's? I was a ne'er-do-well, when I made my mistake; you were a calm, serious man. . . ."

It was as if his father were depriving Addie of all his strength, but he merely said, in his almost cool, even, restrained tones:

"Dear Father, really . . . things are all right between Mathilde and me. Even Mamma understood, in the end, that she did not feel happy here, at home; and Mamma agreed that she would feel more at home and happier in her own house, however small. . . ."

"But I'm not speaking of Mathilde's happiness, I'm speaking of yours. . . ."

"That goes with it, that must go with it, Father. . . ."

And so it always remained: he spoke out no more than that, gave no more of himself than that and was outwardly almost cold with chill shuddering and repellant when spoken to about himself. That he