Her mother had settled again, placidly, in her chair.
"Even if I was a bit conceited…. I don't think I was, really. I only wanted to know whether I could do things. I wanted people to tell me just because I didn't know. But even if I was, what did it matter? You must have known I loved you—desperately—all the time."
"I didn't know it, Mary."
"Then you were stup—"
"Oh, say I was stupid. It's what you think. It's what you always have thought."
"You were—you were, if you didn't see it."
"See what?"
"How I cared—I can remember—when I was a kid—the awful feeling. It used to make me ill."
"I didn't know that. If you did care you'd a queer way of showing it."
"That was because I thought you didn't."