Read "The Mother's Recompense" by Edith Wharton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Anne's sojourn in Washington prolonged itself for a fortnight. Her / letters to her mother, though punctual, were inexpressive; but that was / not her fault, Kate knew. She had inherited from her father a certain / heaviness of pen, an inability to convey on paper shades of meaning / or of feeling, and having said: "Isn't it splendid about Lilla? " had / evidently exhausted the subject, or rather her power of developing it.
At length she returned, bringing with her some studies of magnolias / that were freer and more vigorous than any of her previous work. She / greeted her mother with her usual tenderness, and to Kate her coming / was like a lifting of clouds and opening of windows; the mother had / never supposed that anything in her life could ever again strike such / deep roots as this passion for her daughter. _Perfect love casteth out / fear! _ "Does it? _How does any one know? _" she had often incredulously / asked herself. But now, for the first time, love and security dwelt / together in her in a kind of millennial quiet.