She believed in life, not because it had satisfied her, but because she had had the wisdom to understand that the supreme failure had been, not life's, but her own.
If she could only have lived it again and lived it differently from the beginning! If she could only have used her deeper wisdom not to regret the past, but to create the future! Much as she had loved her husband, she knew now that she had sacrificed him to the world.

Much as she had loved her children, she would have sacrificed them, also, had it been possible.

To the tin gods she had offered her soul--to the things that did not matter she had yielded up the only things that mattered at all.
And she knew now that, in spite of her clearness of vision, the worldliness which had ruined her life was still bound up in all that was essential and endurable in her nature.

She still wanted the illusions as passionately as if she believed in their reality; she still winced as sharply at the thought of Patty's marriage and of all that Patty had given up.

In the case of George, she admitted that it was her fault--that she had spoiled him--but how could she have helped it?
She remembered how he had looked as a child, with his round flushed face, his chestnut curls, and his eager, questioning eyes.