around with
me for a couple of minutes. You'll be all right in--"

"Oh, I'm not going to faint," she cried, but grasped his arm just the
same.

"They always walked us around on the football field when we got woozy--"

"Go out and see if you can find out anything, George," said she, pulling
herself together. "Surely it must be over by this time."

"Simmy's on the lookout," said George. "He'll let us know."

"Be patient, my dear," said Mrs. Tresslyn, wiping a fine moisture from her
upper lip, where it had appeared with Anne's astounding observation. "You
will not have to wait much longer. Be--"

Anne faced her, an unmistakable sneer on her lips. "I'm used to waiting,"
she said huskily.

"She has waited a year and more," said George aggressively, glowering at
his mother. It was a significant but singularly unhappy remark.

For the first time in their lives, they saw their mother in tears. It was
so incomprehensible that at first both Anne and her brother laughed, not
in mirth, but because they were so stupefied that they did not know what
they were doing, and laughter was the simplest means of expressing an
acute sense of embarrassment. Then they stood aloof and watched the
amazing exposition, fascinated, unbelieving. It did not occur to either of
them to go to the side of this sobbing woman whose eyes had always been
dry and cold, this mother who had wiped away their tears a hundred times
and more with dainty lace handkerchiefs not unlike the one she now pressed
so tightly to her own wet cheeks. They could not understand this thing
happening to her. They could not believe that after all their mother
possessed the power to shed tears, to sob as other women do, to choke and
snivel softly, to blubber inelegantly; they had always looked upon her as
proof against emotion. Their mother was crying! Her back was toward them,
evidence of a new weakness in her armour. It shook with the effort she
made to control the cowardly spasmodic sobs. And why was she in tears?
What had brought this amazing thing to pass? What right had she to cry?

They watched her stupidly as she walked away from them toward the window.
They were not unfeeling; they simply did not know how to act in the face
of this marvel. They looked at each other in bewilderment. What had
happened? Only the moment before she had been as cold and as magnificently
composed as ever she had been, and now! Now she was like other people. She
had come down to the level