"Ah, but I am young--youth can bear so much better. And, besides, I don't
think that my sadness would ever be like mama's. You see, in a way, I have
so much more in my life. I should never sit down in my sadness and let it
overwhelm me. I should use it, always. It is strange that grief should so
often make people selfish. It ought, rather, to open doors for us and give
us wider visions."

He was so sure that it had performed these offices for her, looking, as he
now looked, at her delicate profile, turned from him while she gazed toward
the ship, that he was barely conscious of the little tremor of amusement
that went through him for the triteness of her speech. Such triteness was
beautiful when it expressed such reality.

"I suppose that you will count for more, now, in your mother's life," he
said,--that Imogen should, seemingly, have counted for so little had been
the frequent subject of his indignant broodings. "She will make you her
object."

Imogen smiled a little. "Isn't it more likely that I shall make her mine?
one of mine? But you don't know mama yet. She is, in a way, very
lovely--but so much of a child. So much younger--it seems funny to say it,
but it's true--than I am."

"Littler," Jack amended, "not younger."

But Imogen, while accepting the amendment, wouldn't accept the negation.

"Both, I'm afraid," she sighed.