And it was the threatened destruction of her city that had beaten down the
defenses and given her youngest child a brief glimpse of that haughty but
shivering spirit.



VI


Alexina's mind, in spite of a great deal of worldly garnering with an
industrious and investigating scythe, was as immature as her years, for
she had felt little and lived not at all. But she had swift and deep
intuitions, and in spite of the natural volatility of youth, free of care,
she was fundamentally emotional and intense.

Swept from her poor little girlish moorings in the sophisticated sea of the
twentieth-century maiden, she had a sudden wild access of conscience;
she flung herself into her mother's arms and poured out the tale of her
nocturnal transgressions, her frequent excursions into the forbidden realm
of modern San Francisco, of her immense acquaintance with people whose very
names were unknown to Mrs. Groome, born Ballinger.

Then she scrambled to her feet and stood twisting her hands together,
expecting a burst of wrath that would further reveal the pent-up fires in
this long-sealed volcano; for Alexina was inclined to the exaggerations
of her sex and years and would not have been surprised if her mother,
masterpiece of a lost art, had suddenly become as elementary as the forces
that had devastated San Francisco.