"May I ask her to give me a kiss ?" she said.

"She looks so kind, Michael, I don't think she would mind." Sylvia went back home with a little heartache for Michael, wondering, if she was in his place, if her mother, instead of being absorbed in her novels, demanded such incessant attentions, whether she had sufficient love in her heart to render them with the exquisite simplicity, the tender patience that Michael showed.

Well as she knew him, greatly as she liked him, she had not imagined that he, or indeed any man could have behaved quite like that.

There seemed no effort at all about it; he was not trying to be patient; he had the sense of "patience's perfect work" natural to him; he did not seem to have to remind himself that his mother was ill, and thus he must be gentle with her.

He was gentle with her because he was in himself gentle.