mother! It's wonderful the way she has with people!" exclaimed
Gay, turning to Kesiah.

"She's always had it with men--there's something so appealing about her.
You'll be very careful what you say to her, Jonathan."

"Oh, I'll not confess my sins, if that's what you mean," he responded as
he ascended the staircase.

The room was fragrant with burning cedar, and from the dormer-windows,
latticed by boughs, a band of sunlight stretched over the carpet to the
high white bed in which his mother was lying. Her plaintive blue eyes,
which clung to him when he entered, appeared to say; "Yes, see how they
have hurt me--a poor frail creature." Above her forehead her hair, which
was going grey, broke into a mist, and spread in soft, pale strands over
the pillow. Never had her helpless sweetness appealed so strongly to his
emotions, as when she laid her hand on his arm and said in an apologetic
whisper:

"Dear boy, how I hated to bring you back."

"As if I wouldn't have come from the end of the world, dearest mother,"
he answered.

He had fallen on his knees by her bed, but when Kesiah brought him a
chair, he rose and settled himself more comfortably.

"I wanted you, dear, but if you knew how I dreaded to become a drag
on you. Men must be free, I know--never let me interfere with your
freedom--I feel such a helpless, burdensome creature."

"If you could only see how young and lovely you look even when you
are ill, you would never fear becoming a burden. In spite of your grey
hairs, you might pass for a girl at this minute."

"You wicked flatterer!--but, oh, Jonathan, I've had a blow!"

"I understand. It must have been rough."

"And to think how I always idealized him!--how I had believed in his
love for me and cherished his memory! To discover that even at the
last--on his deathbed--he was thinking of that woman!"

She wept gently, wiping her eyes with a resigned and suffering gesture
on the handkerchief Kesiah had handed her. "I feel as if my whole
universe had crumbled," she said.

"But it was no affront to you, mother--it all happened before he saw
you, and was only an episode. Those things don't bite into a man's life,
you know."

"Of course, I knew there had been something, but I thought he had
forgotten it--that he was faithful to his love for me--his spirit
worship, he called it. Then to find out so long after his death--when
his memory had become a part of my religion--that he had turned back at
the end."