“O well, that was only to be expected,” said Loughlin. “It was all right, quite right.”
“She was living with another man. I didn’t know. I was a fool.”
“Good lord! That was a shock for you,” Loughlin said. “What did you do?”
“No, I was not shocked, she was so happy. I lived with them for a year....”
“Extraordinary!”
“And then she died.”
“Your mother died!”
“Yes, so you see I could not stop with my ... I could not stay where I was, and I couldn’t go back to my father.”
“I see, no, but you want to go back to your father now.”
“I’m afraid. I love him, but I’m afraid. I don’t blame my mother, I feel she was right, quite right—it was such happiness. And yet I feel, too, that father was deeply wronged. I can’t understand that, it sounds foolish. I should so love to go home again. This other kind of life doesn’t seem to eclipse me—things have been extraordinary kind—I don’t feel out of my setting, but still it doesn’t satisfy, it is polite and soft, like silk, perhaps it isn’t barbarous enough, and I want to live, somehow—well, I have not found what I wanted to find.”