later on I began to drift away from her. This was not because I realized as I grew older that she was not the true mother of my father but because she was always, day in and day out, year in and year out, sewing and sewing, sewing away like a machine. I could not understand why she was like that and I was impatient with her machinelike ways. But she kept on sewing as she always did; she took care of me and looked after me. She never scolded or punished me, though she never smiled or laughed. She was like this after my father died. Later on we depended almost entirely upon her sewing for our support. Naturally she became even more of a stranger to gaiety and laughter. She managed to send me to school—"
The lamp burned low, the kerosene was about dry. He got up, took a small tin from the bookcase and replenished it.
"Kerosene has gone up twice this month," he said as he adjusted the wick. "Living is going to be more and more difficult—Her life went on like this even after I graduated and got a job and our life became more secure. She probably never stopped sewing until she grew ill and had to lie down.
"Her last years were, I suppose, not so very hard and she lived to a ripe old age. I need have shed no tears, especially when there were so many to mourn at her funeral. Even those who had persecuted her in her lifetime appeared saddened. But I—somehow I saw then before my eyes the whole of her life, the lonely and solitary life that she had woven for herself and which she spent her days in ruminating upon. Moreover, I felt that there were many people in the world like her. It was for those people that I cried. I was still the plaything of my emotions.
"The way you feel about me is the same as the way I used to feel about her. But I was mistaken. Her loneliness was not
