"Indeed it isn't," said her mother. "Mothers always have favorites among their children, and very often a mother dislikes one of her children. Of course she hides her feeling and does her duty. But all the same she can't help the feeling that is down in her heart. I had a presentiment before he was born that I wouldn't like him, and sure enough, I didn't. And he didn't like me, or his father, or any of us."
"It would never occur to me to turn to him," said Mildred.
"Then you see that you've got to go back to the general. You can't get a divorce and alimony, for it was you that left him—and for no cause. He was within his rights."
Mildred hesitated, confessed: "I had thought of going back to him and acting in such a way that he'd be glad to give me a divorce and an allowance."
"Yes, you might do that," said her mother. "A great many women do. And, after all, haven't they a right to? A lady has got to have proper support, and is it just to ask her to live with a man she loathes?"
"I haven't thought of the right or wrong of it," said Mildred. "It looks to me as though right and wrong have very little to do with life as it's lived. They're for hypocrites—and fools."
"Mildred!" exclaimed her mother, deeply shocked.
Mildred was not a little shocked at her own thoughts as she inspected them in the full light into which speech had dragged them. "Anyhow," she went on, "I soon saw that such a plan was hopeless. He's not the man to be trifled with. Long before I could drive him to give me a living and let me go he would have driven me to flight or suicide."
Her mother had now had time to reflect upon Mildred's revelations. Aided by the impressions she herself had gotten of the little general, she began to understand why her daughter had fled and why she would not return. She felt that the situation was one which time alone could solve. Said she: "Well, the best thing is for you to stay on here and wait until he makes some move."
"He'll have me watched—that's all he'll do," said Mildred. "When he gets ready he'll divorce me for deserting him."