"I ... looked at it. You hadn't met him but once and I had a right to know; and that night you were engaged. I took it for a sign."
"And the letter?" It seemed all at once an immeasurable and irreparable loss.
"I sent it back ... and, anyway, it turned out all right." I was possessed for the moment with the conviction that it was all dreadfully, despairingly wrong.
"I couldn't have borne for you to marry anybody but a Christian, Olivia!" I thought of Tommy's exceedingly slender claim to that distinction and I laughed.
"Tommy smokes," I said; "he says he has to do it with the customers."
"Oh, but not as a habit, Olivia." I overrode that.
"Tell me what became of him—of Mr. Garrett. Did you ever hear?"
"He went West," she recollected; "I asked his aunt. He quarrelled with them because his uncle wouldn't send him to school. At his age they thought it wasn't suitable. I wouldn't have wanted you to go West, Olivia."
I took her worn hands in mine. "It's all right, mother. I'm not going West. And I'm not going on the stage any more. I'm done with it." I felt so, passionately, at the time. We sat quietly for a time in that assurance and listened to Effie singing in the kitchen.
"Olivia," she began timidly at last, "aren't you ever going to have any more children?"