"It's different for you," she said. "Ever since I began to grow up I felt there was something about Mamma that would kill me if I let it. I've had to fight for every single thing I've ever wanted. It's awful fighting her, when she's so sweet and gentle. But it's either that or go under."
"Minky—you talk as if she hated you."
"She does hate me."
"You lie." He said it gently, without rancour.
"No. I found that out years ago. She doesn't know she hates me. She never knows that awful sort of thing. And of course she loved me when I was little. She'd love me now if I stayed little, so that she could do what she liked with me; if I'd sit in a corner and think as she thinks, and feel as she feels and do what she does."
"If you did you'd be a much nicer Minx."
"Yes. Except that I should be lying then, the whole time. Hiding my real self and crushing it. It's your real self she hates—the thing she can't see and touch and get at—the thing that makes you different. Even when I was little she hated it and tried to crush it. I remember things—"
"You don't love her. You wouldn't talk like that about her if you loved her."
"It's because I love her. Her self. Her real self. When she's working in the garden, planting flowers with her blessed little hands, doing what she likes, and when she's reading the Bible and thinking about God and Jesus, and when she's with you, Mark, happy. That's her real self. I adore it. Selves are sacred. You ought to adore them. Anybody's self. Catty's…. I used to wonder what the sin against the Holy Ghost was. They told you nobody knew what it was. I know. It's that. Not adoring the self in people. Hating it. Trying to crush it."
"I see. Mamma's committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, has she?"