I shook my head. I wanted much to have told her of Olive Berdenstein’s visit to me, and of my compact with her. For a moment I hesitated. She noticed it, and doubtless drew her own conclusions.
“There has been nothing particular to keep me in,” I said. “I simply felt that I wished to see no one. Don’t you feel like that sometimes?”
“Very often,” she assented. “I think the desire for solitude is common to all of us at times.”
Then we were silent again. I knew quite well what she was waiting for from me, yet I was silent and troubled. Almost I wished that I had not come.
“You have thought over what I told you when you were here,” she said, softly. “You have thought of it, of course.”
“Yes,” I answered. “How could I help it—how could I think of anything else?”
“You have remembered that you are my daughter,” she added, with a little quiver in her tone.
“Yes.”
I kept my eyes upon the carpet; she sighed.
“You are very hard,” she said—“very hard.”