The mother saw her clothed. She stands in a blue gingham frock, almost hidden away by a blue and white checked apron. But the black stockings were there and the tight sleeves and the loved white neck. A dark braid fell across her shoulder, tied with a stiff blue bow.—Her hair is not dark! Mine ... mine is black. Smile at me. Where is her face?
Fanny was troubled: she saw her child again. She wore an apple green mulle dress very clear and clean as it hung straight from her shoulders. The loved white neck! pulsant with breath of her child. She curtsies. There was a flounce at the hem: and at the end of the puffed sleeves was a ruffle. Edith’s bare arms! She wore white stockings, little canvas pumps.—She is thin!—And her hair? and her face?
Fanny shut her eyes and her hands waved with pain before them. She knew these dresses were her own! She saw her child in her own girlish frocks.... And her hair? It was golden ... but it would get dark.—As dark as mine?
—Does she have my frocks and my hair? Through Fanny’s mind passed dresses she had worn: for romping and for dancing, for lessons and for parties.—I have forgotten not a single one. Are Edith’s really the same?
She was moved. She moved against her emotion.—I do not see her! Your dresses—not her face! Has she the same frocks? Fanny knew this could not be.... She knew there still lived within her that which needed to play with the sweet fancy that it was.
“But no,” she murmured. “In no way be like me! Edith ... to save you from that ... come, look at your Mother!”
With her daughter’s eyes, Fanny beheld herself.—I am not hateful. She was a little woman, breaking and bewildered with flood of a world within her heart. She was a little woman tortured in the uses of a Hand that would not leave her alone.
—But I don’t see an end.... There is no end. I do not see a growth.... There is no growing. ... Let me rest here quiet. I am still weak. Too weak to assemble my thoughts. What if the room is Clara’s ... Clara’s lover’s (is there at least love here?) What do these things mean, beside the truth that I am quiet?
The sun sent a sudden shaft under the cornice of the opposite house. It lay in a cold glare, gradually milding, on her.
So Fanny gave up thinking.—Why am I so hungry, having done nothing?