Mrs. Barrington went to the quiet apartment. Lilian had fallen asleep with her head on her mother’s pillow. She had exhausted herself with a soft, pitiful crying. With the quick unreason of youth she upbraided herself for the many times she had been secretly mortified at her mother’s lack of the qualities she liked best. She had spent hours in dreaming of a phantom mother sweet, graceful and refined, who loved all delightful things, who was stirred by music and poetry, who could receive guests with a gracious hospitality in the pretty home which should be simple as befitted moderate means. The sympathy between them would be perfect. They would linger over well-loved poets, they would discuss their brave heroes and favorite heroines. How many times she had fallen asleep with this dear mother’s hand clasped in hers!
But here had been the hard working mother instead. Yes, she had tried to help. Nearly all the summer vacation she had sewed steadily, but she had never given the real love. It was as if neither truly understood the other’s language.
“All the rest of her life I will try,” was her last conscious thought.
Mrs. Barrington found them both asleep. She studied the girl’s face, the finely cut features, the wide eyelids with their bronze fringe, the beautifully curved lips. It was an aristocratic face. She hardly dared think there was a resemblance, and yet it explained what had puzzled her at times. “Lilian,” she said softly. “Lilian, child, it is time you were in bed.”
The girl roused suddenly with a startled look. Then she caught the hand and pressed a fervent kiss upon it.
“You are all so kind,” she murmured. “I can never repay you sufficiently.”
“Do not think of that, I am going to sit here awhile with your mother and you must try and get some sleep.”
“Mother is better I think,” hesitatingly. “She is stronger, and now she is sleeping peacefully.”
She slept on with only a rather heavy breathing. At one Mrs. Dane came to relieve her. Lilian was on the alert quite early and her mother asked for some breakfast.
At ten the doctor came. “I feel so much stronger,” the invalid said, “but I can’t move my limbs. There doesn’t seem any life in them.”