Explore "The Mother's Recompense" by Edith Wharton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.