But there was never a man, of all the men who loved Mercy, who did not feel himself, spite of all her frank and loving intimacy, withheld, debarred, separated from her at a certain point, as if there stood drawn up there a cordon of viewless spirits.
The one grief above which she could not wholly rise, which at times smote her and bowed her down, was her sense of her loss in being childless.

The heart of mother was larger in her even than the heart of wife.

Her longing for children of her own was so great that it was often more than she could bear to watch little children at their play.

She stood sometimes at her window at dusk, and watched the poor laboring men and women going home, leading or carrying their children; and it seemed as if her heart would break.

Everywhere, her eye noted the swarming groups of children, poor, uncared for, so often unwelcome; and she said sadly to herself, "So many! so many! and not one for me." Yet she never felt any desire to adopt children.