{"product_id":"2940013691131","title":"The Mother's Recompense","description":"Kate Clephane was wakened, as usual, by the slant of Riviera sun\u003cbr\u003eacross her bed.  It was the thing she liked best about her shabby\u003cbr\u003ecramped room in the third-rate Hôtel de Minorque et de l'Univers:\u003cbr\u003ethat the morning sun came in at her window, and yet that it didn't\u003cbr\u003ecome too early.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo more sunrises for Kate Clephane.  They were associated with too\u003cbr\u003emany lost joys--coming home from balls where one had danced one's\u003cbr\u003eself to tatters, or from suppers where one had lingered, counting\u003cbr\u003eone's winnings (it was wonderful, in the old days, how often she\u003cbr\u003ehad won, or friends had won for her, staking a louis just for fun,\u003cbr\u003eand cramming her hands with thousand franc bills); associated, too,\u003cbr\u003ewith the scramble up hill through the whitening gray of the garden,\u003cbr\u003eflicked by scented shrubs, caught on perfidious prickles, up to the\u003cbr\u003eshuttered villa askew on its heat-soaked rock--and then, at the\u003cbr\u003edoor, in the laurustinus-shade that smelt of honey, that unexpected\u003cbr\u003ekiss (well honestly, yes, unexpected, since it had long been\u003cbr\u003esettled that one was to remain \"just friends\"); and the pulling\u003cbr\u003eaway from an insistent arm, and the one more pressure on hers of\u003cbr\u003elips young enough to be fresh after a night of drinking and play\u003cbr\u003eand more drinking.  And she had never let Chris come in with her at\u003cbr\u003ethat hour, no, not once, though at the time there was only Julie\u003cbr\u003ethe cook in the house, and goodness knew . . .  Oh, but she had\u003cbr\u003ealways had her pride--people ought to remember THAT when they said\u003cbr\u003esuch things about her . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat was what the sunrise reminded Kate Clephane of--as she\u003cbr\u003esupposed it did most women of forty-two or so (or was it really\u003cbr\u003eforty-four last week?).  For nearly twenty years now she had lived\u003cbr\u003echiefly with women of her own kind, and she no longer very\u003cbr\u003esincerely believed there were any others, that is to say among\u003cbr\u003ewomen properly so called.  Her female world was made up of three\u003cbr\u003ecategories: frumps, hypocrites and the \"good sort\"--like herself.\u003cbr\u003eAfter all, the last was the one she preferred to be in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot that she could not picture another life--if only one had met\u003cbr\u003ethe right man at the right hour.  She remembered her one week--that\u003cbr\u003etiny little week of seven days, just six years ago--when she and\u003cbr\u003eChris had gone together to a lost place in Normandy where there\u003cbr\u003ewasn't a railway within ten miles, and you had to drive in the\u003cbr\u003efarmer's cart to the farm-house smothered in apple-blossoms; and\u003cbr\u003eChris and she had gone off every morning for the whole day, while\u003cbr\u003ehe sketched by willowy river-banks, and under the flank of mossy\u003cbr\u003evillage churches; and every day for seven days she had watched the\u003cbr\u003efarmyard life waking at dawn under their windows, while she dashed\u003cbr\u003eherself with cold water and did her hair and touched up her face\u003cbr\u003ebefore he was awake, because the early light is so pitiless after\u003cbr\u003ethirty.  She remembered it all, and how sure she had been then that\u003cbr\u003eshe was meant to live on a farm and keep chickens; just as sure as\u003cbr\u003ehe was that he was meant to be a painter, and would already have\u003cbr\u003emade a name if his parents hadn't called him back to Baltimore and\u003cbr\u003eshoved him into a broker's office after Harvard--to have him off\u003cbr\u003etheir minds, as he said.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47083146412272,"sku":"2940013691131","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013691131_p0.jpg?v=1763597235","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013691131","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}