They looked on with awe and perplexity.

He was sorry for his mother, and began to speak again, about herself and her life.
"What joys did you know ?" he asked.

"What sort of a past can you recall ?" She listened and shook her head dolefully, feeling something new, unknown to her, both sorrowful and gladsome, like a caress to her troubled and aching heart.

It was the first time she had heard such language about herself, her own life.

It awakened in her misty, dim thoughts, long dormant; gently roused an almost extinct feeling of rebellion, perplexed dissatisfaction--thoughts and feelings of a remote youth.