She sighed, then drew herself a little away from him, as though she were suddenly determined to be independent, to owe no man anything.
"Mother died when I was very young," she said. "I only remember her as some one who was always tired, but very, very kind. But she liked the boys better. I remember I used to be silly and feel hurt because she liked them better. But the day before she died she told me to look after them, and I was so proud, and promised. And I have tried."
"Were they younger than you?"
"Yes. One was three years younger and the other five. I think they cared for me, but never as much as I did for them."
She stopped as though she were listening. The fog was now terribly thick and was in their eyes, their nostrils, their mouths. They could see nothing at all, and when he jumped to his feet and called again, "Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!" he knew that he vanished from her sight. He could feel from the way that she caught his hand and held it when he sat down again how, for a moment, she had lost him.
"It's always that way, isn't it?" she went on, and he could tell from an undertone in her voice that this talking was an immense relief to her. She had, he supposed, not talked to any one for weeks.
"Always what way?" he asked.
"That if you love some one very much they don't love you so much. And then the same the other way."
"Very often," he agreed.
"I'm sure that's what I did wrong at home. Showed them that I cared for them too much. The boys were very good, but they were boys, you know, and took everything for granted as men do." She said this with a very old world-wise air. "They were dear boys—they were and are. But it was better before they went to school, when they needed me always. Afterwards when they had been to school they despised girls and thought it silly to let girls do things for them. And then they didn't like being at home—because father drank."