mirror of the wardrobe shivered, and also her shadow that climbed up the
wall and bent at right-angles at the cornice till it reached the middle of
the ceiling.

Mrs. Moze replied obstinately:

"I've not taken leave of my senses, and I'll thank you to remember that I'm
your mother. I have always carried out your father's wishes, and at my time
of life I can't alter. Your father was a very wise man. We shall be as well
off as we always were. Better, because I can save, and I shall save. We
have no complaint to make; I should have no excuse for disobeying your
father. Everything is mine to do as I wish with it, and I shall give the
shares to the Society. What the shares are worth can't affect my duty.
Besides, perhaps they aren't worth anything. I always understood that
things like that were always jumping up and down, and generally worthless
in the end.... That's all I wanted to tell you."

Why did Audrey seize the candle and walk straight out of the bedroom,
leaving darkness behind her? Was it because the acuteness of her feelings
drove her out, or was it because she knew instinctively that her mother's
decision would prove to be immovable? Perhaps both.

She dropped back into her own bed with a soundless sigh of exhaustion. She
did not blow out the candle, but lay staring at it. Her dream was
annihilated. She foresaw an interminable, weary and futile future in and
about Moze, and her mother always indisposed, always fretful, and curiously
obstinate in weakness. But Audrey, despite her tragic disillusion, was less
desolated than made solemn. In the most disturbing way she knew herself to
be the daughter of her father and her mother; and she comprehended that her
destiny could not be broken off suddenly from theirs. She was touched