vexed. "I'm afraid I _have_ been--talking, my dear."

"Yes, but would you?" I persisted.

He shook his head; then, with such an oh-that-it-could-be! smile, he
said:

"Of course;--we all wish that we could go back and do it over
again--differently. But we never can."

"I know; like the cloth that's been cut up into the dress," I nodded.

"Cloth? Dress?" frowned Father.

"Yes, that Mother told me about," I explained. Then I told him the
story that Mother had told me--how you couldn't go back and be
unmarried, just as you were before, any more than you could put the
cloth back on the shelf, all neatly folded in a great long web after
it had been cut up into a dress.

"Did your mother say--that?" asked Father. His voice was husky, and
his eyes were turned away, but they were not looking at the dancers.
He was listening to me now. I knew that, and so I spoke quick, before
he could get absent-minded again.

"Yes, but, Father, you can go back, in this case, and so can Mother,
'cause you both want to," I hurried on, almost choking in my anxiety
to get it all out quickly. "And Mother said it was _her_ fault. I
heard her."