into my affairs.

When June arrived, however, my tutor began to show signs that his
conscience was troubling him, and one night he delivered his ultimatum.
The joke had gone far enough, he implied. My intentions, indeed, he found
praiseworthy, but in his opinion it was high time that my father were
informed of them; he was determined to call at my father's office.

The next morning was blue with the presage of showers; blue, too, with
the presage of fate. An interminable morning. My tasks had become utterly
distasteful. And in the afternoon, so when I sat down to make out
invoices, I wrote automatically the names of the familiar customers, my
mind now exalted by hope, now depressed by anxiety. The result of an
interview perhaps even now going on would determine whether or no I
should be immediately released from a slavery I detested. Would Mr. Wood
persuade my father? If not, I was prepared to take more desperate
measures; remain in the grocery business I would not. In the evening, as
I hurried homeward from the corner where the Boyne Street car had dropped
me, I halted suddenly in front of the Peters house, absorbing the scene
where my childhood had been spent: each of these spreading maples was an
old friend, and in these yards I had played and dreamed. An unaccountable
sadness passed over me as I walked on toward our gate; I entered it,
gained the doorway of the house and went upstairs, glancing into the
sitting room. My mother sat by the window, sewing. She looked up at me
with an ineffable expression, in which I read a trace of tears.

"Hugh!" she exclaimed.

I felt very uncomfortable, and stood looking down at her.

"Why didn't you tell us, my son?" In her voice was in truth reproach; yet
mingled with that was another note, which I think was pride.

"What has father said?" I asked.

"Oh, my dear, he will tell you himself. I--I don't know--he will talk to
you."

Suddenly she seized my hands and drew me down to her, and then held me
away, gazing into my face with a passionate questioning, her lips
smiling, her eyes wet. What did she see? Was there a subtler relationship
between our natures than I guessed? Did she understand by some
instinctive power the riddle within me? divine through love the force
that was driving me on she knew not whither, nor I? At the sound of my
father's step in the hall she released me. He came in as though nothing
had happened.

"Well, Hugh, are you home?" he said....

Never h