that Imogen felt that a slight enlightenment would be necessary, and that
her mother must be made to feel that her own, even her father's acceptance
of the Pottses, had had always its reservations.

And some acceptances, some atonements, came too late. The Pottses had not
been the only members of the little circle gathered about her father who
had called forth her mother's wounding levity. She had taken refuge on many
other occasions in the half-playful, half-decisive, "I hate 'em," as if
to throw up the final barrier of her own perversity before pursuit. Not
that she hadn't been decent enough in her actual treatment, it was rather
that she would never take the Pottses, or any of the others--oddities she
evidently considered them-seriously; it was, most of all, that she would
never let them come near enough to try to take her seriously. She held
herself aloof, not disdainful, but indifferently gay, from her father's
instruments, her father's friends, her father's aims.

Later on, as Imogen grew into girlhood, her mother lost most of the gaiety
and all of the levity. Imogen guessed that storms, more violent than any
she was allowed to witness, intervened between young rebellion and the
cautious peace, the hostility that no longer laughed and no longer lost
its temper, but that, quiet, kind, observant, went its own way, leaving
her father to go his. The last memory that came up for her was of what had
followed such a storm. It seemed to mark an epoch, to close the chapter of
struggle and initiate that of acceptance. What the contest had been she
never knew, but she remembered in every detail its sequel, remembered lying
in bed in her placid, fire-lit room and hearing in her mother's room next
hers the sound of violent sobbing.

Imogen had felt, while she listened, a vague, alarmed pity, a pity
mingled with condemnation. Her father never lost his self-control and had