"It's true," she said impartially. "Most women wouldn't know their own minds if they were to come upon them in broad daylight. They are like men in that." She shot an amused glance toward the young man.
"You know them," he said bitterly, ignoring her last sentence, and secretly disappointed at such ready acquiescence, which indicated, he feared, a jocular state of mind.
"You mean I don't know them," corrected Mrs. March. "No one does. Do you suppose I know my own daughter's? No more than she does herself. I suppose you were thinking of her, weren't you?"
"It's all over," he answered, and laid down his pen, but continued to make motions across the page with his finger.
Mrs. March showed no surprise, but she ceased knitting, apparently out of respect for the young man's feelings.
"How do you know?" she asked.
"She just told me so," replied Medbury, glad that he could at last unburden himself. "She said she sometimes thought she had no heart. She told me that there were times when she had thought that she might care for me, but now she knew her own mind. So it's all over."
"Know her own mind! Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Mrs. March, and proceeded to knit again. "I guess you've pestered her in some way, and so she said, 'Now I'll decide.' I suppose you've told her often enough that you couldn't live without her, and should always feel that way. It's perfectly natural for a girl to want to see if you can't."
"Then you think it may come out all right, after all?" he asked quickly.
She made a little murmur of dissent.