I was with you always--I slaved for you--you became the
end in life to which I had been called.
"All the time you were only a boy--that was partly I think why I loved you.
You were so gauche, so ignorant, so violent, so confident one moment, so
plunged into despair the next. For a while everything seemed to go well. I
had thought that Clare was going to be good for you, was going to make you
unselfish. I thought that you'd got the better of all that part of you that
was your inheritance. Even when I came down here I thought that all was
well. I knew that I had come down to die and I had thanked God because
He _had_, after all, allowed me to make something of my life, that
I'd been able to see you lifted into success, that I'd seen you start a
splendid career.... Then you came and I knew that your life was broken into
pieces. I knew that what had happened to you might be the most splendid
thing in the world for you and might be the most terrible. If you stay down
here now with your father then you are done for--you are done for and my
life has, after all, gone for nothing."
Her voice broke, then she leaned forward, catching his hands:
"Peter, I'm dying--I'm going. If you will only have it you can take me, and
when I am gone I shall still live on in you. Let me give you everything
that is best in me--let me feel that I have sent you back to London, sent
you with my dying breath--and that you go back, not because of yourself but
because of everything that you can do for every one else.
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