Mrs. Trenchard was lying upon her sofa making a little crimson jacket for the half-clothed doll. She did not move when Katherine came in, but went on with her work, her fat, rather clumsy-looking fingers moving very comfortably up and down the little piece of red cloth.
“Who is that?” she said.
“It’s I, Mother,” said Katherine, remaining by the door.
“Ah, it’s you, dear,” her mother answered. “Just give me that doll on the table. It’s for Miss Sawyer’s Bazaar in the Hampstead Rooms. I said I’d dress three dolls, and I only remembered this morning that they’ve got to go off to-morrow. I thought I’d snatch this quiet time before tea. Yes, it’s for Miss Sawyer, poor thing. I’m sure I shall run out of red silk, and I don’t suppose there’s any in the house. Did you want anything, Katherine?”
Katherine came forward, picked up the doll from the table and gave it to her mother. Then she went to one of the broad high windows and stood looking out. She could see the river, over whose face the evening, studded with golden lamps, was dropping its veil. She could see, very dimly, Westminster Bridge, with dots and little splashes of black passing and repassing with the mechanical indifference of some moving toy. The sight of her mother’s room had suddenly told her that her task would be a supremely difficult one; she did not know why she had not realised that before. Her personal happiness was overwhelmed by her consciousness of her mother; nothing at this moment seemed to be of importance save their relations, the one to the other. “I’m going to hurt her,” she thought, as she turned round from the window. All her life it had been her urgent passion to save her mother from pain.
“Mother dear,” she said, “I’ve got something very important to tell you. Mr. Mark has asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted him. Father says we’re to wait for a year.”
She moved forward and then stopped. Mrs. Trenchard looked at her, suddenly, as a house of cards crumples up at a single touch, her face puckered as though she were going to cry. For an instant it was like the face of a baby. It was so swift that in a flash it was gone, and only in the eyes there was still the effect of it. Her hands trembled so that she forced them down upon her lap. Then her face, except for her eyes, which were terrified, wore again exactly her look of placid, rather stupid composure. The force that she had driven into her hands had done its work, for now she could raise them again; in one hand she held the doll and in another the little red jacket.
“My dear Katherine!” she said. Then—“Just give me that reel of silk, dear, on the table.” Then—“But it’s absurd—you don’t—” she seemed to struggle with her words as though she were beating back some other personality that threatened to rise and overwhelm her. “You don’t—” She found her words. “You don’t know him.”
Katherine broke in eagerly. “I loved him at the very beginning I think. I felt I knew him at once. I don’t know; it’s so hard to see how it began, but I can’t help it, Mother. I’ve known it myself for weeks now; Mother—” She knelt down beside the sofa and looked up, and then, at something in her mother’s eyes, looked down again. “Please—please—I know it seems strange to you now, but soon you’ll get to know him—then you’ll be glad—” She broke off, and there followed a long silence.
Mrs. Trenchard put down the doll very carefully, and then, with her hands folded on her lap, lay back on her sofa. She watched the dark evening as it gathered in beyond the windows; she heard her maid’s knock on the door, watched her draw the curtains and switch on the light.