s head in his hands and groaned. His
mother! He caught up the letter and read on again: "horror and
aversion--alive in her to-day ... your children ... grandchildren ...
of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave...." He
got up from his bed. This cruel shadowy past, lurking there to murder
his love and Fleur's, was true, or his father could never have written
it. 'Why didn't they tell me the first thing,' he thought, 'the day I
first saw Fleur? They knew I'd seen her. They were afraid,
and--now--I've--got it!' Overcome by misery too acute for thought or
reason, he crept into a dusky corner of the room and sat down on the
floor. He sat there, like some unhappy little animal. There was comfort
in dusk, and in the floor--as if he were back in those days when he
played his battles sprawling all over it. He sat there huddled, his
hair ruffled, his hands clasped round his knees, for how long he did
not know. He was wrenched from his blank wretchedness by the sound of
the door opening from his mother's room. The blinds were down over the
windows of his room, shut up in his absence, and from where he sat he
could only hear a rustle, her footsteps crossing, till beyond the bed
he saw her standing before his dressing-table. She had something in her
hand. He hardly breathed, hoping she would not see him, and go away. He
saw her touch things on the table as if they had some virtue in them,
then face the window--grey from head to foot like a ghost. The least
turn of her head, and she must see him! Her lips moved: "Oh! Jon!" She
was speaking to herself; the tone of her voice troubled Jon's heart. He
saw in her hand a little photograph. She held it towards the light,
looking at it--very small. He knew it--one of himself as a tiny boy,
which she always kept in her bag. His heart beat fast. And, suddenly,
as if she had heard it, she turned her eyes and saw him. At the gasp
she gave, and the movement of her hands pressing the photograph against
her breast, he said:

"Yes, it's me."

She moved over to the bed, and sat down on it, quite close to him, her
hands still clasping her breast, her feet among the sheets of the
letter which had slipped to the floor. She saw them, and her hands
grasped the edge of the bed. She sat very upright, her dark eyes fixed
on him. At last she spoke.

"Well, Jon, you know, I see."

"Yes."

"You've seen Father?"

"Yes."

There was a long silence, till she said:

"Oh! my darling!