Page:Possession (1926).pdf/39

 fundamentally it was reasonable. You could not argue the rightness of her position. She had sacrificed everything for her husband and her children. Day by day she continued to sacrifice everything. She would go on sacrificing herself until she died. She would have given her life for them without a regret. To wait upon her amiable unsuccessful husband and her three superlatively wonderful children was her idea of love, of perfect service. They were her world, her life, the beginning, the very core, the end of her passionate existence. The only reward she asked was possession; they must belong to her always.

And then it struck Ellen suddenly that the position of the mother was pitiable. It was pitiable because she knew so little of what was in her daughter's heart. . . so precious little of all the things stirring there so wildly, so savagely. She could never know, at least until after it was done—whatever it was that was to be done. Even then she could not understand that there were stronger things than love, things which were more profound and more important.

"And why are you so interested in Lily?" began her mother. "Why do you say you want to be like her?"

"I don't know," replied Ellen in a low voice. "I don't know except that I don't want to be like the others."

Her mother considered her for a moment and then shook her head, as if silently she had reached a decision.

"I can't understand your restlessness," she said. "I don't know where you get it."

Ellen stood now leaning against the mantelpiece above the gas log. Outside the rain still fell heavily.

"Well," she said, "it's not my fault that one grandfather ran away from home as a boy and went to California to dig gold. . . . And it's not my fault that the other left his wife and ran away to live in Europe for thirteen years."

Mrs. Tolliver turned sharply. "Who told you that? I mean about your grandfather Tolliver. . . ." 