“I will—for them.”
“Then why not for Dick?”
“Dick doesn’t care for me.”
“Dick does.”
She gave the dreariest little gesture of negation.
“You and your mother are curiously alike, Cecily.”
“No.”
“I have often wondered,” he went on ruminatively after a moment, “if there wasn’t something of a case for Allgate Moore. Of course he treated your mother badly. She never even told me about it, but we all knew. After I married your mother—and I was an older man with somewhat cool judgments, my share of discretion and years of experience—I wondered about him sometimes. Because I had a hard time understanding your mother and a hard time being good to her.”
“But you were good to her.”
“After I had learned how; after I had studied and planned how, so that I might not shock her or frighten her or disgust her or hurt her. You are like her—fastidious, delicate minded, not delicate only in mood, but delicate always. You like fine things and beautiful things. So do most men, but most men like other things too. Your mother could not tolerate in any one what was unbeautiful or coarse—many human things.”