sometimes to the door, I was sure I heard her crying; and that she
should grieve so at old Teidelmann's death puzzled me.

She came oftener to our house after that. Her mourning added, I
think, to her beauty, softening--or seeming to soften--the hardness of
her eyes. Always she was very sweet to my mother, who by contrast
beside her appeared witless and ungracious; and to me, whatever her
motive, she was kindness itself; hardly ever arriving without some
trifling gift or plan for affording me some childish treat. By
instinct she understood exactly what I desired and liked, the books
that would appeal to me as those my mother gave me never did, the
pleasures that did please me as opposed to the pleasures that should
have pleased me. Often my mother, talking to me, would chill me with
the vista of the life that lay before me: a narrow, viewless way
between twin endless walls of "Must" and "Must not." This soft-voiced
lady set me dreaming of life as of sunny fields through which one
wandered laughing, along the winding path of Will; so that, although
as I have said, there lurked at the bottom of my thoughts a fear of
her; yet something within me I seemed unable to control went out to
her, drawn by her subtle sympathy and understanding of it.

"Has he ever seen a pantomime?" she asked of my father one morning,
looking at me the while with a whimsical screwing of her mouth.

My heart leaped within me. My father raised his eyebrows: "What
would your mother say, do you think?" he asked. My heart sank.

"She thinks," I replied, "that theatres are very wicked places." It
was the first time that any doubt as to the correctness of my mother's
judgments had ever crossed my mind.