"Oh, I hope so, mother. I haven't been strong, you know, since the first one. We didn't think it advisable."
"Well, if you can manage it that way ..." There was a trace in her tone of the woman who hadn't been able to manage. I wished to reassure her.
"When I was in the hospital the doctor told me ..." I could see the deep flush rising over her face and neck; there were some things which her generation had never faced. I let them fall with her hands and sat gazing at the red core of the base burner, waiting until she should take up her thought again.
"I used to think those things weren't right, Olivia, but I don't know. Sometimes I think it isn't right, either, to bring them into the world when there is no welcome for them." She struggled with the admission. "You and I, Olivia, we never got on together."
"But that's all past now, mother." She clung to me for a while for reassurance.
"I hope so, I hope so; but still there are things I've always wanted to tell you. When you wrote me about going on the stage ... there are wild things in you, Olivia, things I never looked for in a daughter of mine, things I can't understand nor account for unless—unless it was I turned you against life ... my kind of life ... before you were born. Many's the time I've seen you hating it and I've been harsh with you; but I wanted you should know I was being harsh with myself ..."
"Mother, dear, is it good for you to talk so?"
"Yes, yes, I've wanted to. You see it was after your father came home from the war and we were all broken up. Forester was sickly, and there was the one that died. So when I knew you were coming, I—hated you, Olivia. I wanted things different. I hated you ... until I heard you cry. You cried all the time when you were little, Olivia, and it was I that was crying in you. I've expected some punishment would come of it."
"Oh, hush, hush mother! I shouldn't have liked it either in your place. Besides, they say—the scientists—that it isn't so that things before you are born can affect you as much as that." She moved her head feebly on the pillows in deep-rooted denial.
"They can say that, but we've never got on. There's things in you that aren't natural for any daughter of mine. They can say that, Olivia, but we—we know."