Once for him, once for her, once for the children! She took up the
candle and went upstairs to them.
For a while she stood beside the bed in one room where the two little
girls were asleep clasping each other, cheek against cheek; and in
another room at the bedside of the two little boys, their backs turned
on one another and each with a hand doubled into a promising fist
outside the cover. In a few years how differently the four would be
divided and paired; each boy a young husband, each girl a young wife;
and out of the lives of the two of them who were hers she would then
drop into some second place. If to-night she were realizing what
befalls a wife when she becomes the Incident to her husband, she would
then realize what befalls a woman when the mother becomes the Incident
to her children: Woman, twice the Incident in Nature's impartial
economy! Her son would playfully confide it to his bride that she must
bear with his mother's whims and ways. Her daughter would caution her
husband that he must overlook peculiarities and weaknesses. The very
study of perfection which she herself had kindled and fanned in them
as the illumination of their lives they would now turn upon her as a
searchlight of her failings.
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