He found his mother still up. She had been re-reading "The Old Wives'
Tale," and she sat before a ruddy fire in the shadow beyond the lit
circle of a green-shaded electric light thinking, with the book put
aside. In the dimness above was his father's portrait. "Time you were in
bed, mother," he said reprovingly, and kissed her eyebrow and stood
above her. "What's the book?" he asked, and picked it up and put it
down, forgotten. Their eyes met. She perceived he had something to say;
she did not know what. "Where have you been?" she asked.
He told her, and they lapsed into silence. She asked another question
and he answered her, and the indifferent conversation ended again. The
silence lengthened. Then he plunged: "I wonder, mother, if it would put
you out very much if I brought home a wife to you?"
So it had come to this--and she had not seen it coming. She looked into
the glowing recesses of the fire before her and controlled her voice by
an effort. "I'd be glad for you to do it, dear--if you loved her," she
said very quietly. He stared down at her for a moment; then he knelt
down beside her and took her hand and kissed it. "_My dear_," she
whispered softly, stroking his head, and her tears came streaming. For a
time they said no more.
Presently he put coal on the fire, and then sitting on the hearthrug at
her feet and looking away from her into the flames--in an attitude that
took her back to his boyhood--he began to tell her brokenly and
awkwardly of Marjorie.
"It's so hard, mother, to explain these things," he began. "One doesn't
half understand the things that are happening to one. I want to make you
in love with her, dear, just as I am. And I don't see how I can."
"Perhaps I shall understand, my dear. Perhaps I shall understand better
than you think."
"She's such a beautiful thing--with something about her----. You know
those steel blades you can bend back to the hilt--and they're steel! And
she's tender. It's as if someone had taken tears, mother, and made a
spirit out of them----"