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[Looking up at the shy—strangely]

My having a son was a failure, wasn’t it? He couldn’t give me happiness. Sons are always their fathers. They pass through the mother to become their father again. The Sons of the Father have all been failures! Failing they died for us, they flew away to other lives, they could not stay with us, they could not give us happiness!

[Paternally—in her father’s tone]

You had best forget the whole affair of your association with the Gordons. After all, dear Nina, there was something unreal in all that has happened since you first met Gordon Shaw, something extravagant and fantastic, the sort of thing that isn’t done, really, in our afternoons. So let’s you and me forget the whole distressing episode, regard it as an interlude, of trial and preparation, say, in which our souls have been scraped clean of impure flesh and made worthy to bleach in peace.

[With a strange smile]

Strange interlude! Yes, our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!

[Resting her head on his shoulder]

You’re so restful, Charlie. I feel as if I were a girl again and you were my father and the Charlie of those days made into one. I wonder is our old garden the same? We’ll pick flowers together in the aging afternoons of spring and summer, won’t we? It will be a comfort to get home—to be old