"Clodagh has made a fool of me, Nance," he said harshly. "She has never been straight with me—never from the very first."
"And do you know why?"
"No; I can't pretend that I know why."
His tone was very bitter.
"Because she cares too much. She idealises too much."
Gore made a sound that might have been meant for a laugh.
"I think it is I who have idealised."
Nance straightened her small figure.
"Then you have always treated her wrongly. What Clo needs is not to be idealised, but to be taken care of; not to be praised or blamed, but to be taken care of." Her brown fingers were tightly clasped, as they rested on the cab doors. "All her life she has wanted to be taken care of—and all her life she has been thrown back upon herself. When I was little, I had her; but when she was little, she had no one. Our mother died when I was born."
Something in the simple pathos of this statement stirred Gore's ever-present sense of the sacredness of home ties.