Mother drew in her breath again, this time with a catch that was
almost a sob. And then she began to talk--at first haltingly, with
half-finished sentences; then hurriedly, with a rush of words that
seemed not able to utter themselves fast enough to keep up with the
thoughts behind them.

She told of her youth and marriage, and of my coming. She told of her
life with Father, and of the mistakes she made. She told much, of
course, that was in Mary Marie's diary; but she told, too, oh, so much
more, until like a panorama the whole thing lay before me.

Then she spoke of me, and of my childhood, and her voice began to
quiver. She told of the Mary and the Marie, and of the dual nature
within me. (As if I didn't know about that!) But she told me much that
I did not know, and she made things much clearer to me, until I saw--

You can see things so much more clearly when you stand off at a
distance like this, you know, than you can when you are close to them!

She broke down and cried when she spoke of the divorce, and of the
influence it had upon me, and of the false idea of marriage it gave
me. She said it was the worst kind of thing for me--the sort of life I
had to live. She said I grew pert and precocious and worldly-wise, and
full of servants' talk and ideas. She even spoke of that night at the
little cafe table when I gloried in the sparkle and spangles and told
her that now we were seeing life--real life. And of how shocked she
was, and of how she saw then what this thing was doing to me. But it
was too late.

She told more, much more, about the later years, and the