r face flushed by another August
sunset was leaning over him. The river became the sea, and the noise of
the people on the Embankment were the people walking on the promenade
below. In one moment as Michael kissed her now, her embrace gave to him
what it had not given during all the years between--a consciousness that
he depended upon her life.

"Dearest boy," she murmured, "how good of you to come back so quickly
from the Carthews!"

"But I would much rather be with you," said Michael.

Indeed, as he sat beside her holding her hand, he wondered to himself
how he had been able to afford to miss so many opportunities of sitting
like this, and immediately afterward wondered at himself for being able
to sit like this without any secret dread that he was making himself
absurd by too much demonstrativeness. After all, it was very easy to
show emotion even to one's mother without being ridiculous.

"Poor Dicky Prescott," she said, and tears quickly blurred her great
gray eyes and hung quivering on the shadowy lashes beneath. Michael held
her hand closer when he saw she was beginning to cry. He felt no awe of
her grief, as he had when she told him of his father's death. This
simpler sorrow brought her so much nearer to him. She was speaking of
Prescott's death as she might have spoken of the loss of a cherished
possession, a dog perhaps or some familiar piece of jewelry.

"I shall never get used to not having him to advise me. Besides, he was
the only person to whom I could talk about Charles--about your father.
Dicky was so bound up with all my life. So long as he was alive, I had
some of the past with me."

Michael nodded with comprehending gravity of assent.

"Darling boy, I don't mean that you and darling Stella are not of course
much more deeply precious to me. You are. But I can't help thinking of
that poor dear man, and the way he and Charles used to walk up and down
the quarter-deck, and I remember once Charles lent him a stud. It's the
silly little sentimental memories like that which are so terribly
upsetting when they're suddenly taken away."

Now she broke down altogether, and Michael with his arms about her, held
her while she wept.

"Dearest mother, when you cry I seem to hold you very safely," he
whispered. "I don't feel you'll ever again be able to escape."

She had ceased from her sobbing with a sudden shiver and catch of the
breath and looked at him with frightened eyes.

"Michael, he once said t