"Why then do you try to resist, when you know how useless it is?" Helen asked, and something in her manner brought a sudden flush of shame to Katy's cheek, as she said: "What do you mean? Of what are you thinking?"
Helen did not stop to consider the propriety of her remarks, but replied: "I was thinking that you reminded me of a bird beatings wings against the bars of its cage, vainly hoping to escape into the freedom which it feels is outside its prison house, but falling back bruised and bleeding with its efforts, and no nearer escape."
For a moment Katy regarded her sister intently, while she seemed trying to digest the meaning of her words; then, as it vaguely flashed upon her, tears gathered on her eyelashes and rolled down her cheeks, while with a quivering lip she asked: "If you were that bird, what would you do?"
"I? What would I do? I should beat my wings until I died; but your nature is different. You are more yielding, more loving, more submissive. You can bear it better."
This was not the first time since she came to New York and saw how firm, how unbending was the will which held Katy in its grasp, that Helen had thought how surely she, with her high, imperious spirit, should die, from the very resistance she should offer to that will. But as she had truly expressed it, Katy's gentle, submissive nature saved her, for never had she offered so violent opposition to any plan as she did now to that of sending her child away.
"I can't, I can't," she repeated constantly, and Mrs. Cameron's call, made that afternoon with a view to reconcile the matter, only made it worse, so that Wilford, on his return at night, felt a pang of self-reproach as he saw the drooping figure holding his child upon its lap and singing it a lullaby in a plaintive voice, which told how sore was its heart.
Wilford did not mean to be either a savage or a brute. On the contrary he had made himself believe that he was acting only for the good of both mother and child; but the sight of Katy touched him, and he might have given up the contest had not Helen unfortunately taken up the cudgels in Katy's defense, neglecting to conceal the weapons, and so defeating her purpose. It was at the dinner from which Katy was absent that she ventured to speak, not asking that the plan be given up, but speaking of it as an unnatural one which seemed to her not only useless but cruel.