he closed the door of his mother's room. Up
to the time he had entered her presence he had been in a state of the
wildest anxiety and excitement. The moment the interview was over his
mind worked normally and easily, and he felt himself completely master
of his own actions.

Indeed, a change had taken place. He had gone to his mother feeling that
he was accountable to her for his brother's disappearance, and prepared
to tell his story with every detail he could recall, yet knowing that he
was wholly innocent of the catastrophe, and that he had done everything
in his power to find the lost man. But in that moment he was unconscious
of two things: first, of the extreme hardness of his own nature; and
secondly, that he had not in reality the slightest real love either for
his mother or for Alexander. The moral sufferings of his childhood had
killed the natural affections in him, and there had remained nothing in
their stead but a strong sense of duty to his nearest relations. It was
this sense which had prompted him to receive Alexander kindly, and to
take the utmost care of him during his visit; and it was the same
feeling which had impelled him to come to his mother, in order to give
the best account he could of the terrible catastrophe. But the frightful
accusation she had put upon him, and her stubborn determination to abide
by it, had destroyed even that lingering sense of duty which he had so
long obeyed. He knew now that he experienced no more pain at Alexander's
loss than he would naturally have felt at the death of an ordinary
acquaintance, and that his mother had absolved him by her crowning
injustice from the last tie which bound him to his family. In the first
month at Buyukdere, after Alexander had disappeared, he had been
overcome by the horror of the situation, and by the knowledge that he
must tell his mother of the loss of her favorite son. He had mistaken
these two incentives to the search for a feeling of love for the missing
man. A quarter of an hour with his mother had shown him how little love
there had ever been between them, and her frantic behavior, which he
felt was not insanity, had disgusted him, and had shown him that he was
henceforth free from all responsibility towards her.

The love of a child for his mother may be instinctive in the first
instance, but as the child grows to manhood he becomes subject to
reason; and that which reason first rejects is injustice, because
injustice is the mos