ionless. He did not speak a word.

"Mrs. Haddon said something more," Phyllis continued, after a pause. Her
voice had fallen still another tone. "'Yes,' she said, as if musing,
'dead--dead! A man is as his mother has made him. He is with her from
the moment she loves his father. She is evermore thinking of him; he is
precious to her before the mystery of his birth is revealed to her.
He grows up by her side, and loves her because he knows that she
understands him. She does understand him, and she understands his father
better by understanding her son.' She said that, Mr. Courtland, and I
felt that she had spoken one of the greatest truths of this mysterious
life of ours. Then she said, 'Herbert Courtland is a man who has lived
with honor to himself, with honor to the memory of his mother, and of
his sister, whom he loved. He is a man, and he has not merely attained
distinction in the world; if he is without fear, he is also without
reproach; and ask him if he has not been strengthened in his fight with
whatever of base may have risen up within him, being a man, from day to
day, by the thought that his sister is one with him; that his purity of
heart and of act is the purity of his mother and his sister, upon which
no stain must ever come.' That was all she said, Mr. Courtland."

There was a long pause after she had spoken. He sat there with his head
bent, his fingers interlaced. He had his eyes fixed upon the floor. His
cup of tea stood untasted beside him on a little Algerian table.

And she--as she looked at him her soft eyes became dim with tears.
She knew that the words which she had spoken, the words which she had
repeated as they were spoken by the lady whom she had met the previous
night, had awakened many memories within him. She too had her memories.
She knew that there was a certain gratefulness in the midst of the
bitterness of such memories.

That was all she knew.

And the tears continued to well up to her eyes until she was aware that
he had risen from his seat and was standing in front of her. She drew
her hand across her eyes. She saw a movement in his lips. They were
trembling, but no sound came from them. The hand that he stretched out
to her was trembling also. She put her own into it. He held her hand
tightly for a moment, then dropped it suddenly and almost fled from the
room, without uttering a word.

For a few moments she stood where he had left her, and then she went to
a sofa and seated he