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"If they don't make trouble between you and me," Janet said, "it isn't very serious."

"Ah, but it may be." Wildherne answered her more gravely than she had expected. "This Halkin Street life is very queer. You'll see when you get into it more deeply. I love my father passionately, and so he loves me, but my mother has always had a strange jealousy of us both—of his love for me and mine for him. My mother is not a clever woman, but she is deeply acquisitive. She wants to have everything absolutely for herself. She would cut herself to pieces for my father or myself, but she is not clever enough—she has never been clever enough to understand either of us. Don't think me unkind in this. I love my mother, but I find her very irritating to be with because she wants so much more of everything than she will ever have. My father has been escaping from her again and again all his life, and then reproaching himself for unkindness to her and so being over-tender and good to her. But still always escaping her, and she knows that. You have to pay her attention and deference, not because she is a vain woman, but because she is always wishing to be reassured of her power over people, a power of which she is never truly secure, as she knows.