But it was all a dream. He wasn’t coming back at all, and she bitterly regretted having let him go as easily as she had done. She had been so sure he would come back that she hadn’t said a word, getting her sacrifice ready for him to admire. There were many things she could have said to him, the evening when he finally spoke to her, telling her that it was all settled and that his mind was made up and he was going. At that point, his mind wasn’t made up at all. She could have stopped him with a word. She could have reminded him that he was an only child and that his duty was to his father and mother. And he had no faith at all in himself; it was only because of her prayers and encouragement that he had got through his examinations his last year in school. She had carried him all his life, and now he imagined he was going to be able to get along without her. And how did he think he was going to be able to get along in a house full of men — priests and students — all better ready for the priesthood than he was, and all better up on the world than he would ever be. They would look down on him. He would be very glad to get away out of that place and come back to her.

But he wasn’t coming back, there was the realization of that stirring in her again, and it would start giving her orders again, taking charge, and she would obey it, getting up and sitting down and walking here and there and never easy anywhere, because the only ease that could come to her would come if she could just get down on the floor and put her face in the corner and let her mind wander away into sleep, but into a different, roomy kind of sleep, very deep and distant, where there was no worry and where her mind would not be confined in dreams but could float and become vague and might even break free and sail off up like a child’s balloon, taking her burden of memory with it.