ok like that!" Dickie cried. He wrenched
his hands from her grasp and threw his arms impulsively about her neck.
"Don't--it hurts me. And--and, after all," he added, reasoningly,
consolingly, "it wasn't one of these horses, you know. They've never
done anybody any harm. It was an accident. There must always be
accidents sometimes, mustn't there? And then, you see, it all happened
long, long ago. It must have, for I don't remember anything about it.
It must have happened when I was a baby."

"Alas, no," Katherine exclaimed, wrung by the pathos of his innocent
egoism; "it happened even before then, my dearest, before you were
born."

With the unconscious arrogance of childhood, Richard had, so far, taken
his mother's devotion very much as a matter of course. He had never
doubted that he was, and always had been, the inevitable centre of all
her interests. So now, her words and her bearing, bringing--in as far
as he grasped them--the revelation of aspects of her life quite
independent of his all-important, little self, staggered him. For the
first time poor Dickie realised that even one's own mother, be she
never so devoted, is not her child's exclusive and wholly private
property, but has a separate existence, joys and sorrows apart.
Instinctively he took his arms from about her neck and backed away into
the angle of the window-seat, regarding her with serious and somewhat
startled attention. And, doing so, he for the first time realised
consciously something more, namely, the greatness of her beauty.

For the years had dealt kindly with Katherine Calmady. Not the great
sorrows of life, or its great sacrifices, but fretfulness, ignoble
worries, sordid cares, are that which draw lines upon a woman's face
and harshen her features. At six and thirty Lady Calmady's skin was
smooth and delicate, her colour, still clear and softly bright. Her
hair, though somewhat darker than of old, was abundant. Still she wore
it rolled up and back from her forehead, showing the perfect oval of
her face. Her eyes, too, were darker; and the expression of them had
become profound--the eyes of one who has looked on things which may not
be told and has chosen her part. Her bosom had become a little fuller;
but the long, inward curve of her figure below it to the round and
shapely waist, and the poise of her rather small hips, was lithe and
free as ever. While there was that enchanting freshness about her which
is more than the mere freshness o