"Oh, that!" Such a funny look came to his face, half ashamed, half vexed. "I'm afraid I have been—talking, my dear."
"Yes, but would you?" I persisted.
He shook his head; then, with such an oh-that-it-could-be! smile, he said:
"Of course;—we all wish that we could go back and do it over again—differently. But we never can."
"I know; like the cloth that's been cut up into the dress," I nodded.
"Cloth? Dress?" frowned Father.
"Yes, that Mother told me about," I explained. Then I told him the story that Mother had told me—how you couldn't go back and be unmarried, just as you were before, any more than you could put the cloth back on the shelf, all neatly folded in a great long web after it had been cut up into a dress.
"Did your mother say—that?" asked Father. His voice was husky, and his eyes were turned away, but they were not looking at the dancers. He was listening to me now. I knew that, and so I spoke quick, before he could get absent-minded again.
"Yes, but, Father, you can go back, in this case, and so can Mother, 'cause you both want to," I hurried on, almost choking in my anxiety to get it all out quickly. "And Mother said it was her fault. I heard her."
"Her fault!" I could see that Father did not quite understand, even yet.