“No, no!” she exclaimed, with feverish haste, sitting upright. “Let it be now. I can’t bear another night—I should go mad! Say what you have to say now—quickly!”
“You say it is your mother,” Carey began. “She will look upon this as a sin, you think? She—”
“No,” she answered wearily. “It isn’t even that. Mother is not a religious woman in the sense of the word. She thinks she is. She goes to church, of course, and says her prayers, but her religion doesn’t enter into her life; it isn’t a vital thing to her. The thought of the sin against God would not count for very much with her, it would be the outrage against social prejudice—the—”
She paused. Her voice was dry and hard.
Carey looked at her—puzzled, uncertain. Her face was rigid—it told him nothing.
“You acknowledge this, and yet, surely the knowledge that she would not be tortured by fears for your soul, is much? I understand, I realize what a fearful thought the idea of inflicting pain of that sort must be. But you say yourself her unhappiness will be caused merely by the fact that you may—well, by what she calls your social disgrace. That is hard enough, I own; but, Bridget, will you let scruples like these stand in the way? I mean if you are willing to brave it for yourself, surely—”
He rose impetuously.
“Oh, you don’t understand—you don’t understand,” she wailed, wringing her hands. “Don’t you see that it doesn’t matter to me whether her misery comes from a worthy or an unworthy cause? The fact remains that she will be wretched—wretched—and I shall have made her wretched. I—her child! She has lived for me, thought of me, worked for me early and late, all these years—these long years! Oh, don’t think I don’t know—don’t think I idealize her; don’t think we are devoted even in the sense of being friends—of being in sympathy with one another. We are not. We haven’t a thought, a hope, an ideal in common. We exasperate and irritate one another continually—we always shall. But, don’t you see? She is my mother, the mother that cried over me when I was little, because I had the toothache, or because some one slighted me, or because—Oh!” She threw out her hands towards him with a gesture. “You don’t remember your mother, Larry. If you did, you would know what these things mean—the little baby things that make one feel the bond, the only bond there is between us, just the tie of blood. I’m her child. She’s my mother. I can’t tell you any more!”
She stopped abruptly, shaken and trembling, and hid her face in both hands.
Carey was silent for a time. He took one of them and put it to his lips before he spoke.