"Yes, and that's the humiliating part of it."
"Well, Claire, when you've lived as long as I have you won't be so uppish about making compromises," flung back Mrs. Robson. "Of course, if you've got another engagement, you've got another engagement, but if...."
"I wouldn't have gone, anyway. I'm through with that sort of thing."
"Why, Claire, how can you! It's your duty, now!--with your country at war—and ... and ... Even that dreadful Serbian the other night made that plain."
"I'll go with you to church on Sundays, of course, but—"
"What am I to do?" wailed Mrs. Robson. "At least you might think of me! I've not had much pleasure in my life, goodness knows, and now just as I...."
Mrs. Robson broke off abruptly on a flood of tears. Two weeks ago these tears would have overwhelmed Claire. As it was, she sat calmly stirring her tea, surprised and a little ashamed of her coldness. The truth was that Claire Robson was feeling all the fanatical cruelty that comes with sudden conviction. The forms of her new faith had hardened too quickly and left outlines sharp and uncompromising.
For years Claire had found shelter from the glare of middle-class snobbery beating about her head, by shrinking into her mother's inadequate shadow as a desert bird shrinks into the thin shadow of a dry reed by some burned-out watercourse. Now a full noon of disillusionment had annihilated this shadow and given her the courage of necessity. And there was something more than courage—there was an eagerness to stand alone in the commonplace words with which she sought to temper her refusal to assist at the coming church reception:
"I can't see any good reason, mother, why you shouldn't go and help Mrs. Towne.... What have my plans to do with it?"
To which her mother answered: