But now we're faced with--not the slander
and not our own fear of it, because we haven't any, but someone else's
fear of it--your son's. And, oh, dearest woman in the world, I know
what your son is to you, and it frightens me! Let me explain a
little: I don't think he'll change--at twenty-one or twenty-two so
many things appear solid and permanent and terrible which forty sees
are nothing but disappearing miasma. Forty can't tell twenty about
this; that's the pity of it! Twenty can find out only by getting to
be forty. And so we come to this, dear: Will you live your own life
your way, or George's way? I'm going a little further, because it
would be fatal not to be wholly frank now. George will act toward you
only as your long worship of him, your sacrifices--all the unseen
little ones every day since he was born--will make him act. Dear, it
breaks my heart for you, but what you have to oppose now is the
history of your own selfless and perfect motherhood. I remember
saying once that what you worshipped in your son was the angel you saw
in him--and I still believe that is true of every mother.
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