ree in engineering. You're a college man, Don, the only one in
Spring Valley. And I'm so proud, and I'm so glad. Oh! Don--Don----"

She laid a hand on his breast shyly, almost afraid of him now--the first
hand she had ever laid upon the heart of any man these twenty years. It
was her son, a man finished, a gentleman, she hoped.... Could he not be
a gentleman? So many things of that sort happened here in America. Poor
boys had come up and come through--had they not? And even a poor boy
might grow up to be a gentleman--was not that true--oh, might it not
after all be true?

He laid his own hand over hers now, the hand on which the blood was not
yet dried.

"Mom," said he, "I ought to go back and thrash the life out of that man
yet. I ought to wring the neck of that doddering old fool marshal. I
ought to whip every drunken loafer on those streets. Whose business was
it? Couldn't we cross the square without all that?"

He stopped suddenly, the fatal thought ever recurring to his mind. But
he lacked courage. Why should he not? Was this not far worse than facing
death for both of them? Their eyes no longer sought one another.

"Mom----" said he, with effort now.

"Yes, my boy."

"_Where's my dad?_"

A long silence fell. Could she lie to him now?

"The truth now!" he said after a time.

"You have none, Don!" said she gaspingly at last. "He's gone. Isn't that
enough? He's dead--yes--call him dead--for he's gone."

He pushed back roughly and looked at her straight.

"Did he really leave any money for my education?"

She looked at him, her throat fluttering. "I wish I could lie," said
she. "I do wish I could lie to you. I have almost forgot how. I have
been trying so long to live on the square--I don't believe, Don, I know
how to do any different. I've been trying to live so that--so that----"

"So what, mother?"

"So I could be worthy of _you_, Don! That's been about all my life."

"_I have no father?_"

She could not reply.

"Then was what--what that man said--was _that the truth_?"

After what seemed to both of them an age of agony she looked up.

She nodded mutely.

Then her hand gripped fiercely at his coat lapel. A great dread filled
her. Must she lose also her boy, for whom she had lived, for whom she
had denied herself all these years--the boy who was more than life
itself to her? Her face was white. She looked up into another face, a
strange face, that of her son; and it was white as her own.