“I wish I were a man,” she said, “I think women have much the worst time in the war. Is your mother old?” But of course she was old why he was old himself!
“She died last Christmas.”
“Oh! I'm so sorry!”
“You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?”
“Yes. That's her portrait.” At the end of the room, hanging on a strip of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as though faded, of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes, and bent a little forward, as if questioning her painter. Fort went up to it.
“It's not a bit like you. But she must have been a very sweet woman.”
“It's a sort of presence in the room. I wish I were like her!”
Fort turned. “No,” he said; “no. Better as you are. It would only have spoiled a complete thing.”
“She was good.”
“And aren't you?”