turned on him was white and rigid.

"My dear mother," said Augustine, coming up to her, "how pale you are."

She had been sitting there for all that time, tearless, in a stupor of
misery. Yes, she answered him, she was very tired.

Augustine stood over her looking out of the window. "A little walk
wouldn't do you good?" he asked.

No, she answered, her head ached too badly.

She could find nothing to say to him: the truth that lay so icily upon
her heart was all that she could have said: "I am your guilty mother. I
robbed you of your father. And your father is dead, unmourned, unloved,
almost forgotten by me." For that was the poison in her misery, to know
that for Paul Quentin she felt almost nothing. To hear that he had died
was to hear that a ghost had died.

What would Augustine say to her if the truth were spoken? It was now a
looming horror between them. It shut her from him and it shut him away.

"Oh, do come out," said Augustine after a moment: "the evening's so
fine: it will do you good; and there's still a bit of sunset to be
seen."

She shook her head, looking away from him.

"Is it really so bad as that?"

"Yes; very bad."

"Can't I do anything? Get you anything?"

"No, thank you."

"I'm so sorry," said Augustine, and, suddenly, but gravely,
deliberately, he stooped and kissed her.

"Oh--don't!--don't!" she gasped. She thrust him away, turning her face
against the chair. "Don't: you must leave me.--I am so unhappy."

The words sprang forth: she could not repress them, nor the gush of
miserable tears.

If Augustine was horrified he was silent. He stood leaning over her for
a moment and then went out of the room.

She lay fallen in her chair, weeping convulsively. The past was with
her; it had seized her and, in her panic-stricken words, it had thrust
her child away. What would happen now? What would Augustine say? What
would he ask? If he said nothing and asked nothing, what would he think?

She tried to gather her thoughts together, to pray for light and
guidance; but, like a mob of blind men locked out from sanctuary, the
poor, wild thoughts only fled about outside the church and fumbled at
the church door. Her very soul seemed shut against her.

She roused herself at last, mechanically telling herself that she must
go through with it; she must dress and go down to dinner and she must
find something to say to Augustine, something that would make what had
happened to them less siniste