And your mother--I suspect _she_ was too young.

If she hadn't been quite so young--" He stopped, and stared again straight ahead at the dancers--without seeing one of them, I knew.

Then he drew a great deep sigh that seemed to come from the very bottom of his boots.
"But it was my fault, my fault, every bit of it," he muttered, still staring straight ahead.

"If I hadn't been so thoughtless--As if I could imprison that bright spirit of youth in a great dull cage of conventionality, and not expect it to bruise its wings by fluttering against the bars!" I thought that was perfectly beautiful--that sentence.

I said it right over to myself two or three times so I wouldn't forget how to write it down here.