he'd only stayed away! If he'd never have come back.
So he told her the whole story, even to his suspicion that his father was a liar, and had deserted him and his mother twenty-six years before. He told her of the long agony of the reunion, describing his father in detail. And at the end, he said, "You see why I wish he'd never come back. You do see, don't you, Mary . . . if he'd stayed away, I'd never have thought of him at all, or at least only as my mother thought of him. But he isn't like that at all. I don't see how she can take him back . . . how she can bear to have him about."
She wanted to cry out, "Don't you see, Philip? Don't you see the kind of woman she is? If you don't see, nothing can save you. She's worse than he is, because he's harmless." But she only said quietly, "Perhaps she's in love with him. If that's true, it explains anything."
"Maybe it's that. She must be in love with him."
Mary thought, "Oh, Philip! If you'd only forget all the things that don't matter and just live, you'd be so much happier!" She wanted him to be happy more than anything in the world. She would, she knew, do anything at all to make him happy.
Presently she said, "She came to see me this afternoon, Philip . . . your mother. That's why I'm here now. She said horrible things . . . that weren't true at all. She said . . . she said . . . that I'd been living with you all along, and she'd just found out about it. She said that I came here to meet you in the stable. She's hated me always . . . just because I've always
