Read "The Mother's Recompense" by Edith Wharton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Kate Clephane lay awake all night thinking of the man who had been too / shy to come into the box.
Her sense of security, of permanence, was gone. She understood now / that it had been based on the idea that her life would henceforth go / on just as it had for the two months since her return; that she and / Anne would always remain side by side. The idea was absurd, of course; / if she followed it up, her mind recoiled from it. To keep Anne for the / rest of her life unchanged, and undesirous of change -- the aspiration / was inconceivable. She wanted for her daughter the common human round, / no more, but certainly no less. Only she did not want her to marry / yet -- not till they two had grown to know each other better, till Kate / had had time to establish herself in her new life.