I asked her: Was she sensitive to the possibility that a complete airing of her life choices might not play well with Texas suburban women who were deemed crucial to her chances of victory?

Davis fixed me with an expression that could have belonged to Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — one of defiant, chilling composure. “No,” she said.

Then, more strongly: “No! I think that any woman who had a conversation with me and had an opportunity to truly understand my life story wouldn’t view it through a critical lens. There are people, of course, in the world of politics, who look for things to be critical about. But those people are already against you. I think women who aren’t of that mind would not look at my story with judgment. I would hope they would share some admiration for what I did to climb from where I was.”

I then brought up the conflicting accounts I had heard — from her, her campaign, her daughter and her ex-husband — about how often she visited her family while at Harvard. Davis insisted that her memory was correct: She’d come home every 10 days. (After reviewing their clashing versions of this and other matters, Jeff Davis replied by email with palpable weariness, “Print the legend!”) But, she added, regardless of whose memory was more accurate, “The point is that I was going to school and coming home and being with my girls as much as possible to make that work, and that as their mother I made the choice that was best for them — and it was best for them — to be back at home with my mom instead of all day at day care.”

So I asked her why she and her campaign hadn’t just said that all along. Trumpeting that she had adhered to an every-10-day visiting regimen seemed like a way to shade her biography out of concern that Texas voters would not approve of her decisions.