'Were they of a personal nature?' inquired Mrs. Wylie, with a slight suggestion of mischief in her tone.
'Decidedly so. She has a pleasant way of telling me my faults. But I like it, because she is invariably right. Perfect sincerity is a rare thing in these times.'
Mrs. Wylie did not reply to this melancholy truth. She was looking past her companion across the glassy water, with her eyelids slightly contracted and her rather thin lips pressed closely together. It was an expression very familiar to Theo Trist, and he waited silently. Presently she made a little movement, and looked at him with a faint suggestion of surprise, as if she had just landed on firm earth after a long, long mental voyage.
'She was quite right, Theo!' was the result.
He smiled vaguely, and looked obstinate.
'If,' said Mrs. Wylie in an explanatory way, 'I were a different sort of woman to what I am, I should consider myself very much ill-used at being deprived of a fuller confidence. I should strive, and nag, and persist until I had wormed out of you your ambitions, your joys, your sorrows, and your possible motives. That is what Brenda means, I think. Theoretically, she is right; practically and personally she is wrong.'
'Is it not,' suggested the young fellow in self-defence, 'the height of egoism to inflict thoughtlessly upon other people one's petty, temporary, and often imaginary woes?'
'Not always, Theo. There is one case where it is real kindness to be a little selfish, and to speak openly of one's feelings and thoughts. I once had a little boy of my own, though it was years ago, when I was quite a different person to ... to what I am now, so I can hardly pretend to know much of a mother's feelings; but I am convinced that it is truer kindness to tell one's mother too much than too little. She knows—her mere natural instinct tells her—that there is something wrong, and in the intensity of her love and anxiety she exaggerates things unduly.
They were both speaking lightly and only half gravely, but there was something pathetic in their ignorance, however indifferent and conversational their tones might be. Both were speaking vaguely and speculatively of something they had never known, something they never could know from personal experience.
'Perhaps it is better....' Trist began, and then he stopped suddenly, withheld by a quick remembrance of the utter misery that weighed down the heart of the little Eton boy who had gazed stupidly out of the cab window as he passed over Windsor bridge fifteen years ago. He could hear again the rattle of the shaky wheels, the vibration of the windows; and again the sound of this kindly woman's voice, lovingly lowered, came to his recollection.