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Instead of answering, the daughter pressed closer to her.

They waited a moment before going on.

“You have a longing, yearning nature; you inherited it, and I have stimulated it in you by what I learnt from him. I have put great objects, noble men and women before you. So did he; I have plunged you into lofty thoughts, as he plunged in nature to refresh his own. I knew when I sent you away from me that I was acting in accordance with his spirit. But I knew best with what armour you were equipped: it came to you from him. And yet…. Magne!”

The daughter instinctively drew her arm from within the mother’s and stood still. She needed to rest on her own strength, as it were.

“Yes, I see it; that is the third time to-day. You feel that I am taking hold upon you; and I will take hold upon you. It was at the party at your uncle’s that you said to me, when I was going in to supper, ‘Mother, you might as well keep on your gloves.’ You were ashamed of my work-hardened hands.”

“Mother, mother!” The daughter covered her face and turned away.

“I will tell you this, my child, that without these work-hardened hands you would not be what you are now; if you have lived in a society where it is considered shameful for a woman to have such hands, you have lived in an evil society. And to-day you enjoyed that society, enjoyed it as though you believed you yourself had attained a certain greatness in it.”

“No, mother; no, no!”

“Yes, you did! You may perhaps have felt a pang of conscience or of fear; that may be, for I was there. But now the moment has come for you to choose; I wanted your choice to be made before you should cross the threshold of your father’s house, my child. Work–or else the other thing.”

“Oh, mother, you wrong me! If only you knew!”

“If I can make you love your father–and I shall do all I can, and you have capacity–if I can make you really, rightly love him, then I know all that you will be able to do. We women must love in order to have faith.”