s, and perhaps--God will."

"I know that, Mother. And I want you to know that if this call wasn't
mightier than anything else in all the world, I would not leave you."

"Yes, I know that, dear son."

For a moment they stood in silence by the window and then turned,
together, to the fireside.

They were in Helen's writing-room. The room where so often she had
struggled to put enough life into her weak little verses to send them
winging on their way. The drawers of her desk were full of sad fancies
that had been still-born, or had come fluttering back to her ark
without even the twig of hope to cheer her. But at all this she had
never repined--she had her son! And now? Well, he was leaving her.
Might never----

Sitting in the warmth and glow the woman looked at her son. With all
the yearning of her soul she wanted to keep him; she had so little; so
little. And then she recognized, as women do, in the Temple where the
Most High speaks to them, that if he turned a deaf ear to the best
that was in him, she could not honour him.

"You have been happy, dear son? I mean you have had a happy life on
the whole?"

Helen had wanted that above all else. His life had been so short--it
might be so soon over, and the trivial untalked-of things rose sharply
now to the surface.

"Yes, Mother. Far too happy and easy."

"I've been thinking." Helen's thought went slowly over the backward
road--she must not break! But she must go back to the things they had
left unspoken. "I've been thinking, during the last twenty-four hours,
of all the happenings, dear, that I wish had been different. Your
father, Brace! I--I tried not to deprive you of your father--I knew
the cost. It--it wasn't all his fault, dear; it was no real fault of
either of us; it was my misfortune, you see--he was asking what--what
he had a perfect right to ask--but I was, well, I had nothing to give
him that he wanted."

Northrup went across the space between him and his mother and laid his
hand upon hers.

"Mother, I understand. Lately I have felt a new sympathy for Father,
and a new contempt. He missed a lot that was worth while, but he did
not know. It was damnable; he might have--kept you."

"No, Brace. It is the world's thought. I have never been bitter. I
only wish he could have been happy--after--after he went away."

"And he wasn't?" This had never been discussed between them.

"No, dear. He married a woman who seemed to be what he wanted. She
wearied