§ iv
The long, long summer wore away; wasted and arid days they seemed to her. She found but little pleasure in her flowers and birds, no more consolation in her philosophers.
“I suppose I’m growing old!” she thought, and she allowed herself to dally with the idea of growing really old, when nothing would be expected of her, but dignity, which would be no trouble at all.
“But I’m barely forty!” she reflected. “I suppose there’ll be at least twenty years more of this!”
And her heart sank.
“It’s peace I want!” she said. “I’m not made for struggling or achieving. I’ve been a wretched failure.... I suppose I’ve even failed Gilbert—in some sort of way. All I can do is to go on blundering and trying—for all that terribly long time.... If I can only see the children on the right road!... And I don’t even know what the right road is!”
She was happy to see her daughters so full of new interest and energy when the time came for going home.
“I can live in them!” she said. “If they’ll let me!”