Margaret never forced a confidence, but after a pause she said very
gently: "Dear, is there anything you want to tell me?"
"It's nothing," said Lynn, roughly. He rose and walked around the room
nervously. "It's nothing," he repeated, with assumed carelessness. "I--I
asked her to marry me, and she wouldn't. That's all. It's nothing."
Margaret's first impulse was to smile. This child, to be talking of
marriage--then her heart leaped, for Lynn was twenty-three; older than
she had been when the star rose upon her horizon and then set forever.
Then came a momentary awkwardness. Childish though the trouble was, she
pitied Lynn, and regretted that she could not shield him from it as she
had shielded him from all else in his life.
Then resentment against Iris. What was she, a nameless outcast, to scorn
the offered distinction? Any woman in the world might be proud to become
Lynn's wife.
Then, smiling at her own folly, Margaret went to him, dominated solely
by gratitude. Not knowing what else to do, she drew his tall head down
to kiss him, but Lynn swerved aside, and with his face against the
softness of his mother's hair, wiped away a boyish tear.
"Lynn," she said, tenderly, "you are very young."
"How old were you when you married, mother?"
"Twenty-one."
"How old was father?"
"Twenty-three."
"Then," persisted Lynn, with remorseless logic, "I am not too young, and
neither is Iris--only she doesn't care."
"She may care, son."
"No, she won't. She despises me."
"And why?"
"She said I had no heart."
"The idea!"
"Maybe I didn't have then, but I'm sure I have now."
He walked back and forth restlessly. Margaret knew that the griefs of
youth are cruelly keen, because they come well in the lead of the
strength to bear them. She was about to offer the usual threadbare
consolation, "You will forget in time," when she remembered the stock of
which Lynn came.
His mother, who had carried a secret wound for more than twenty-five
years, who was she, to talk about forgetting, and, of all others, to her
son?
Gratitude was still dominant, though in her heart of hearts she knew
that she was selfish. Lynn felt the lack of sympathy, and became
conscious, for the first time in his life, that her tenderness had a
limit.
"Mother," he said, suddenly, "did you love father?"
"Why do you ask, son?"
"Because I want to know."
"I respected him highly," said Margaret, at length. "He was a good man,
Lynn."
"You have answered," he returned. "You don't know--you don't
understand."
"But I do understand," she flashed.
"You can't, if you didn't love father."
"I--I cared for someone else," said Margaret, thickly, unwilling to be
convicted of shallowness.