taught her that to do so was selfish; so that, as she listened to the
undisciplined grief, and thought that it might be well for her to go in to
her mother and console her, she thought, too, of the line that, tenderly,
she would say to her--for Imogen, now, was fourteen years old, with an
excellent taste in poetry:

"The gods approve
The depth, but not the tumult, of the soul."

It was a line her father often quoted to her and she always thought of him
when she thought of it.

But, just as she was rising to go on this errand of mercy, her father
himself had come in. He sat down in silence by her bed and put out his hand
to hers and then she seemed to understand all from the very contrast that
his silence made. The sobs they listened to were those of a passionate, a
punished child, of a child, too, who could use unchildlike weapons, could
cut, could pierce; she must not leave her father to go to it. After a
little while the sobs were still and, as her father, without speaking, sat
on, stroking her hair and hand, the door softly opened and her mother came
in. Imogen could see her, in her long white dressing-gown, with her wide
braids falling on either side, all the traces of weeping carefully effaced.
She often came in so to kiss Imogen good-night, gently, and with a slight
touch of shyness, as though she knew herself shut away from the inner
chamber of the child's heart, and the moment was their tenderest, for
Imogen, understanding, though powerless to respond, never felt so sorry
or so fond as then. But to-night her mother, seeing them there together
hand in hand, seeing that they must have listened to her own intemperate
grief,--their eyes gravely, unitedly judging her told her that,--seeing
that her husband, as at the very beginning, had found at once his ally,