tain
timidity, an ominous hesitation; and from the expression of her face you
might have gathered, in spite of her kiss, that she was not entirely
glad to see him; that she had something up her sleeve, something that
she desired to conceal from him. It was as if by way of concealing it
that she let him in stealthily with no more opening of the door than was
absolutely necessary for his entrance.

"You haven't brought Vi'let?" she whispered.

"No."

They went softly together through the shop, darkened by the blinds that
were drawn for Sunday. In the little passage beyond he paused at the
door of the back parlor.

"Where's Father?"

She winced at the word "Father," so out of keeping with his habitual
levity. It was the first intimation that there was something wrong with
him.

"He's upstairs, my dear, in His bed."

"What's the matter with him?"

"It's the Headache." She went on to explain, taking him as it were
surreptitiously into the little room, that the Headache had been
frequent lately, not to say continuous; not even Sundays were exempt.

"He's a sad sufferer," she said.

Instead of replying with something suitable, Ranny set his teeth.

She had sat down helplessly, and as she spoke she gazed up at him where
he remained standing by the chimney-piece; her look pleaded, deprecated,
yet obstinately endeavored to deceive. But for once Ranny was blind to
the pathos of her deception. Vaguely her foolish secrecy irritated him.

"Look here, Mother," he said, "I want to talk to you. I've got to tell
you something."

"It's not anything about your Father, Ranny?"

"No, it is not."

(She turned to him from her trouble with visible relief.)

"It's about my wife."

"Vi'let?"

"She's left me."

"Left you? What d'you mean, Ranny?"

"She's gone off--Bolted."

"When?"

"Last night, I suppose--to Paris."

She stared at him strangely, without sympathy, without comprehension. It
was almost as if in her mind she accused him of harboring some monstrous
hallucination. With her eternal instinct for suppression she fought
against it, she refused to take it in. He felt himself unequal to
pressing it on her more than that.

"Would she go there--all that way--by herself, Ranny?" she brought out
at last.

"By herself? Not much!"

"Well--how--"

And still she would not face the thing straight enough to say, "How did
she go, then?"

He flung it at her brutally, exasperated by her obstinacy.

"She went wit