before turning into bed that night tom had fought to a finish his battle with himself. the victory rested, he hoped, with common sense. he could no longer doubt that before very long an extraordinary offer would be made to him. to repulse it would be insane.

"as far as my personal preferences go," he wrote to hildred, "i would rather remain as i am. remaining as i am would be easier. i'm free; i've no one to consider; i know my own way of life, and can follow it pretty surely. but i'm not adaptable. you yourself must often have noticed that my mind works stiffly, and that i find it hard to see the other fellow's point of view. i'm narrow, solitary, concentrated, and self-willed. but as long as i've no one to consult i can get along.

"to enter a family of which i know nothing of the ways or traditions or points of view is going to be a tough job. it will be much tougher than if i merely married into it. in that case i should be only an adjunct to it, whereas in what may happen now i shall have to become an integral part of it. i must be as a leg instead of as a crutch. i don't know how i shall manage it.

"i'm not easily intimate with anyone. perhaps that's the reason why, as you say, i haven't enough

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of the lover in me. i'm not naturally a lover. i'm not naturally a friend. i'm a solitary. a solitude à deux, with the servants, as you always like to stipulate, is my conception of an earthly paradise.

"to you the normal of life is a father, a mother, a brother, a sister. to me it isn't. to have a father seems abnormal to me, or to have a sister or a brother. if i can see myself with a mother it's because of a poignant experience of the kind that burns itself into the memory. but i can't see myself with another mother, and that's what i've got to do. mind you, it isn't a stepmother i must see, nor an adopted mother, nor a mother-in-law; it's a real mother of my own flesh and blood. i must see a real brother, a real sister. they think that all they have to do is to fling their doors open, and that it will be a simple thing for me to walk in. but i must fling open something more tightly sealed than any door ever was—my life, my affections, my point of view. they are four, and need only make room for one. i'm only one, and must make room for four.

"but i'm going to do it. i'm going to do it for a number of reasons which i shall try to give you in their order.

"first, for your sake. you want it. for me that is enough. i see your reasons too. it will help us with your father and mother, and all our future life. so that settles that.

"then, i want to conform to what those who care anything about me would expect. i don't want to seem a fool. it's what i should seem if i turned such an offer down. nobody would understand my

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emotional and sentimental reasons but myself; and when it comes to the emotional and sentimental there is a pro side as well as a con to the whole situation.

"because if i must have a father there's no one whom i could so easily accept as a father as this very man. he seems to me like my father; i think i seem to him like his son. more than that, he looks like my father, and i must look like the kind of son he would naturally have. i'm sure he likes me, and i know i like him. if i was choosing a father he's the very one i should pick out.

"next, and you may be surprised to hear me say it, i could do very well with tad as a brother. that he couldn't do with me is another thing; but there's something about the chap which has bewitched me from the day i first laid eyes on him. i haven't liked him exactly; i've only felt for him a kind of responsibility. i've tried to ignore it, to laugh at it, to argue it down; but the thing wouldn't let me kill it. if there's such a thing as an instinct between those of the same flesh and blood i should say that this was it. i've no doubt that if we come to living in one menagerie we shall be the same sort of friends as a lion and a tiger—but there it is.

"the women appall me. i can't express it otherwise. with the father i could be a son as affectionate as if i'd never left the family. with tad i could establish—i've established already—a sort of fighting fraternity. to neither the mother nor the daughter could i ever be anything, so far as i can see now. they wouldn't let me. they wouldn't want me. if they yield to the extent of admitting me into the

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family they'll always bar me from their hearts. the limit of my hope is that, since i generally get along with those i have to live with, the hostility won't be too obvious. i also have the prospect that when you and i are married—and that's my motive in the whole business—i shall get a measure of release."

he purchased next morning a pair of gloves and an inexpensive walking stick so as to look as nearly as might be like the smart young men he saw on the pavements of fifth avenue. it was not his object to be smart; it was to be up to the standard of the house at which he was to lunch.

to reach that house he went on the top of a bus like the one on which he had ridden with honey nearly ten years earlier. he did this with intention, to make the commemoration. honey's suspicions and predictions had then seemed absurd; and here they were on the eve of being verified.

he got off at the corner at which, as he remembered, honey and he had got off on that august sunday afternoon. he crossed the road to see if he could recognize the home of the whitelaw baby as it had been pointed out to him. recognition came easily enough because in the whole line of buildings it was the only one which stood detached, with a bit of lawn on all sides of it. a spacious brownstone house, it had the cheery, homey aspect which comes from generous proportions, and masses of spring flowers, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths, banked in the bow-windows.

being a little ahead of his time, he walked up the street, trying to compose himself and recapture his

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nerve. the story, first told to him by honey, and repeated in scraps by many others, returned to him. too far away to be noticed by anyone who chanced to be looking out, he stood and gazed back at the house. if he was really harry whitelaw he had been born there. the last time he had come forth from it he had been carried down those steps by two footmen. he had been wheeled across the street and into the park by a nurse in uniform. within the glades of the park a change had somehow been wrought in his destiny, after which there was a blank. he emerged from that blank into consciousness sitting on a high chair in a kitchen, beating on the table with a spoon, and asking the question: "mudda, id my name gracie, or id it tom?" the memory was both vague and vivid. it was vague because it came out from nowhere and vanished into nowhere. it was vivid because it linked up with that bewilderment as to his identity which haunted his early childhood. the discovery that he was a little boy forced on a woman craving for a little girl was the one with which he first became aware of himself as a living entity.

to his present renunciation of that woman he tried to shut his mind. there was no help for it. he had long kept a veil before this sad holy of holies; he would simply hang it up again. he would nail it up, he would never loosen it, and still less go behind it. what was there would now forever be hidden from any sight, even from his own.

at a minute before one he recrossed the avenue, and went down the little slope. in the rôle of harry whitelaw which he was trying to assume going up the

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steps was significant. the long, devious, apparently senseless odyssey had brought him back again. it was only to himself that the odyssey seemed straight and with a purpose.

the middle-aged man who opened the door raised his eyebrows and opened his eyes wide in a flash of perturbation. it was only for an instant; in the half of a second he was once more the proper stiffened image of decorum. and yet as he took from the visitor the hat, stick, and gloves, tom could see that the eyes were scanning his face furtively.

it was a big dim hall, impressive with a few bits of ancient massive furniture, and a stairway in an alcove, partially hidden by a screen which might have been torn from some french cathedral. tom, who had risen to the modest standard of the ansleys, again felt his insufficiency.

following the butler, he went down the length of the hall toward a door on the right. but a door on the left opened stealthily, and stealthily a little figure darted forth.

"so you've come! i knew you would! i knew i shouldn't go down to my grave without seeing you back in the home from which twenty-three years ago you were carried out. i've said so to dadd times without number, haven't i, dadd?"

"you have indeed, miss nash," dadd corroborated, "and none of us didn't believe you."

"dadd was the second footman," miss nash explained further. "he was one of the two who lifted you down that morning. now he's the butler; but he's never had my faith."

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she glided away again. dadd threw open a door. tom found himself in a large sunny room, of which the bow-window was filled with flowers.

there was no one there, which was so far a relief. it gave him time to collect himself. except for apartments in museums, or in some château he had visited in france, he had never been in a room so stately or so full of costly beauty. he knew the beauty was costly in spite of his lack of experience.

on the wall opposite the bow-window stretched a blue-green flemish tapestry, with sad-eyed, elongated figures crowding on one another within an intricate frame of flowers, foliage, and fruits. a white-marble mantelpiece, bearing in shallow relief three garlanded groups of dancing cupids, supported a clock and a pair of candelabra in biscuit de sèvres mounted in ormolu. above this hung a full-length eighteenth-century lady—reynolds, romney, gainsborough—he was only guessing—looking graciously down on a cabinet of european porcelains, on another of miniatures, and another of old fans. bronzes were scattered here and there, with bits of iridescent spanish luster, and two or three plaques of limoges enamel intense in color. since there was room for everything, the profusion was without excess, and not too carefully thought out. a work-basket filled with sewing materials and knitting stood on a table strewn with recent magazines and books.

he was so long alone that he was growing nervous when lily dropped into the room as if she had happened there accidentally. she sauntered up to him,

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however, offering her hand with a long, serpentine lifting of the arm, casual and negligent.

"how-d'ye-do? mamma's late. i don't know whether she's in the house or not. perhaps she's forgotten. she often does." she picked up a silver box of cigarettes. "have one?"

on his declining she lighted one for herself, dropping into a big upright chair and crossing her legs. it was the year when young ladies liked to display their ankles and calves nearly up to the knee. lily, whose skirt was of unrelieved black, wore violet silk stockings, with black slippers which had bright red buckles set in paste. over her shoulders a violet scarf, with bright red bars, hung loosely. in sitting, her sinuous figure drooped a little forward, the elbow of the hand which held the cigarette supported on her knee.

though she hadn't asked him to sit down, he took a chair of his own accord, waiting for her to speak again. when she did so, after an interval of puffing out tiny rings of blue smoke, her voice was languid and monotonous, and yet with overtones of passionate self-will.

"you've been in the army, haven't you?"

he said he had been.

"did you like it?"

"i never had time to think as to whether i did or not. i just had to stick it out."

"did you ever see tad over there?"

"no, i never did."

as she was laconic he too would be laconic. she didn't look at him, or show an interest in his per

[pg 444]

sonality. if she thought him the brother who after long disappearance was coming home again she betrayed no hint of the possibility. he might have been a chance stranger whom she would never see again. lapses of silence did not embarrass her. she sat and smoked.

he decided to assume the right to ask questions on his own side. "you've been married since i saw you last, haven't you?"

"yes." she didn't resent this, apparently, and after a long two minutes of silence, added: "and divorced." there was still a noticeable passage of time before she continued, in her toneless voice: "i've a baby too."

"do you like him?"

a flicker of a smile passed over a profile heavy-browed, handsome, and disdainful. "he's an ugly little monster so far." she had a way of stringing out her sentences as after-thoughts. "i daresay he's all right."

there followed a pause so long and deep that in it you could hear the ticking of the clock. he was determined to be as apathetic as herself. she had no air of thinking. she scarcely so much as moved. her stillness suggested the torrid, brooding calm before volcanic or seismic convulsion. without a turning of the head or a change in her languid intonation, she said, casually:

"you're our lost brother, aren't you?"

the emotion from which she was so free almost strangled him. he could barely breathe the words, "would you care if i were?"

[pg 445]

"what would be the use of my caring if papa was satisfied?"

"still, i should think, that one way or the other, you might care."

to this challenge she made no response. she was not hostile in any active sense; he was sure of that. she impressed him rather as exhausted after terrific scenes of passion, waywardness, and disillusion. a little rest, and she would be ready for the same again, with himself perhaps to take the consequence.

mrs. whitelaw came in with the rapid step and breathless, syncopated utterance he remembered.

"so sorry to be late. i'd been for a long drive. i wanted to think. i had no idea what time it was. i suppose you must be hungry."

she gave him her hand without looking him in the face, helped over the effort of the meeting by the phrases of excuse.

"so this is my mother!"

it was his single thought. in the attempt to realize the fact he had ceased to be troubled or embarrassed. he could only look. he could only wonder if he would ever be able to make himself believe that which he did not believe. he repeated to himself what he had already written to hildred: he could believe the man to be his father; but that this woman was his mother he rejected as an impossibility.

not that there was anything about her displeasing or unsympathetic. on the contrary, she had been beautiful, and still had a lovely distinction. features that must always have been soft and appealing had gained by the pathos of her tragedy, while a skin that

[pg 446]

could never have been anything but delicate and exquisite was kept exquisite and delicate by massage and cosmetics. veils protected it from the sun and air; gauntlets, easy to pull on and off, preserved the tenderness of hands wearing many jeweled rings, but a little too dimpling and pudgy. the eyes, limpid, large, and gray with the lucent gray of moonstones, had lids of the texture of white rose petals just beginning to shrivel up and show little bistré stains. the lashes were long, dark, and curling like those of a young girl. tom couldn't see the color of her hair because she wore a motoring hat, with a sweeping brown veil draped over it and hanging down the back. heather-brown, with a purplish mixture, was the harris tweed of her coat and skirt. the blouse of a silky stuff, was brown, with blue and rose lights in it when she moved. a row of great pearls went round her neck, while the rest of the string, which was probably long, disappeared within the corsage.

dadd appeared on the threshold, announcing lunch.

"come on," mrs. whitelaw commanded, and lily rose listlessly. "is tad to be at home?"

lily dragged her frail person in the wake of her mother. "i don't know anything about him."

tom followed lily, since it seemed the only thing to do, crossing the hall and passing through the door by which miss nash had darted out to speak to him.

the dining room, on the north side of the house, was vast, sunless, and somber. tom was vaguely aware of the gleam of rich pieces of silver, of the carving of high-backed chairs as majestic as thrones. one of these thrones dadd drew out for mrs. white

[pg 447]

law; a footman drew out a second for lily; another footman a third for himself.

"sit there, will you?" mrs. whitelaw said, in her offhand, breathless way, as if speaking caused her pain. "this room is chilly."

she pulled her coat about her, though the room had the temperature suited to the great plant of cattleya, on which there might have been thirty blooms, which stood in the center of the table. with rapid, nervous movements she picked up a spoon and tasted the grapefruit before her. a taste, and she pushed it away, nervously, rapidly. nervously, rapidly, she glanced at tom, glancing off somewhere else as if the sight of him hurt her eyes.

"how long have you been back?"

he gave her the dates and places connected with his recent movements.

"did you like it over there?"

he made the reply he had given to lily.

"were you ever wounded?"

he said he had once received a bad cut on the shoulder which had kept him a month in hospital, but otherwise he had not suffered.

"tad's lost his right arm. did you know that?"

he had first got this news from guy ansley. he was very sorry. at the same time, when others had been so horribly mangled, it was something to escape with only the loss of a right arm.

she gave him another of her hurried, unwilling glances. "how did you come to know the ansleys so well?"

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he told the story of his early meetings with the fat boy on the sidewalk of louisburg square.

"wasn't it awful living with that burglar?"

tom smiled. "no. it seemed natural enough. he was a very kind burglar. i owe him everything."

to tom's big appetite the lunch was frugal, but it was ceremonious. he was oppressed by it. that three strong men should be needed to bring them the little they had to eat and drink struck him as ridiculous. and this was his father's house. this was what he should come to take as a matter of course. he would get up every morning to eat a breakfast served with this magnificence. he would sit every day on one of these thrones, like an apostle in the apocalypse. he thought of breakfasts in the tenements, at the tollivants', at the quidmores', or with honey in the grimy eating-places where they took their meals, and knew for the first time in many years a pang something like that of homesickness.

it was not altogether the ceremony against which he was rebellious. it had elements of beauty which couldn't be decried. what he felt was the old ache on behalf of the millions of people who had to go without, in order that the few might possess so much. it was the world's big wrong, and he didn't know what caused it. his economic studies, taken with a view to helping him in the banking profession, had convinced him that nobody knew what caused it, and that the cures proposed were worse than the disease. without thinking much of it actively, it was always in the back of his mind that he must work to eliminate this fundamental ill. sitting and eating commonplace

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food in this useless solemn stateliness, the conviction forced itself home. somewhere and somehow the world must find a means between too much and too little, or mankind would be driven to commit suicide.

during the meal, which was brief, lily scarcely spoke. as they recrossed the hall to go back to the big sunny room, she sloped away to some other part of the house. tom and his mother sat down together, embarrassed if not distressed.

pointing to the box of cigarettes, she said, tersely, "smoke, if you like."

in the hope of feeling more at ease he smoked. still wearing her hat and coat, she drew her chair close to the fire, which had been lighted while they were at lunch, holding her hands to the blaze.

"do you think you're our son?"

the question was shot out in the toneless voice common to lily and herself, except that with the mother there was the staccato catch of breathlessness between the words.

tom was on his guard. "do you?"

turning slightly she glanced at him, quickly glancing away. "you look as if you were."

"but looks can be an accident."

"then there's the name."

"that doesn't prove anything."

"and my husband knows a lot of other things. he'll tell you himself what they are."

he repeated the question he had put to lily, "would you care if i were your son?"

making no immediate response, she evaded the

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question when she spoke. "if you were, you'd have to make your home here."

"couldn't i be your son—and make my home somewhere else?"

"i don't see how that would help."

"it might help me."

the large gray eyes stole round toward him. "do you mean that you wouldn't want to live with us?"

"i mean that i'm not used to your way of living."

"oh, well!" she dismissed this, continuing to spread her jeweled fingers to the blaze. "you said once—a long time ago—when i saw you in boston—that you couldn't get accustomed to another—to another mother—now—or something like that. do you remember?"

he said he remembered, but he said no more.

"well, what about it?"

since it was precisely to another mother that he was now making up his mind, he found the question difficult. "it was three years ago that i said that. things change."

"what's changed?"

"perhaps not things so much as people. i've changed myself."

"changed toward us—toward me?"

"i've changed toward the whole question—chiefly because mr. whitelaw's been so kind to me."

"i don't suppose his kindness makes any difference in the facts. if you're our son you're our son whether he's kind to you or not."

"his kindness may not make any difference in the facts, but it does make a difference in my attitude."

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"mine can't be influenced so easily."

though he wondered what she meant by that he decided to find out indirectly. "no, i suppose not. after all, you're the one to whom it's all more vital than to anybody else."

"because i'm the mother? i don't see that. they talk about mother-instinct as if it was so sure; but—" she swung round on him with sudden, unexpected flame—"but if they'd been put to as many tests as i've been they'd find out. why, almost any child can seem as if he might have been the baby you haven't seen for a few years. you forget. you lose the power either to recognize or to be sure that you don't recognize. if anyone tries hard enough to persuade you...."

"has anyone tried to persuade you—about me?"

he began to see from whence tad and lily had drawn the stormy elements in their natures. "not in so many words perhaps; but when some one very close to you is convinced...."

"and you yourself not convinced...."

she rose to her feet tragically. "how can i be convinced? what is there to convince me? resemblances—a name—a few records—a few guesses—a few hopes—but i don't know. who can prove a case of this kind—after nearly twenty-three years?"

in his eagerness to reassure her he stepped near to where she stood. "i hope you understand that i'm not trying to prove anything. i never began this."

"i know you didn't. i feel as if a false position would be as hard on you as it would be on ourselves."

"then you think the position would be a false one?"

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"i'm not saying so. i'm only trying to make you see how impossible it is for me to say i'm sure you're my boy—when i don't know. i'm not a cold-hearted woman. i'm only a tired and frightened one."

"would it be of any help if i were to withdraw?"

"it wouldn't be of help to my husband."

"oh, i see! we must consider him."

"i don't see that you need consider anyone but yourself. we've dragged you into this. you've a right to do exactly as you please."

"oh, if i were to do that...."

"what i don't want you to do is to misjudge me. not that it would matter whether you misjudged me or not, unless—later—we were compelled to see ourselves as—as son and mother."

"i shouldn't like to have either of us do that—under compulsion."

restlessly, rapidly, she began to move about, touching now this object and now that. her hands were as active as if they had an independent life. they were more expressive than her tone when they tossed themselves wildly apart, as she cried:

"what else could it be for me—but compulsion?" he was about to speak, but she stopped him. "do me justice. put yourself in my place. my boy would now be twenty-four. they bring me a man who looks like thirty. yes, yes; i daresay you're not thirty, but you look like it. it's just as hard for me as if you were thirty. i'm only forty-four myself. they want me to think that this man—so big—so grave—so old—is my little boy. how can i? he

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may be. i don't deny that. but for me to think it ...!"

he watched her as she moved from table to table, from chair to chair, her eyes on him reproachfully, her hands like things in agony.

"it's as hard for me to think it as it is for you."

the words arrested her. her frenzied motions ceased. only her eyes kept themselves on him, with their sorrowful, fixed stare.

"what do you mean by that?"

he tried to explain. "my only conception of a mother is of some one poor—and hard-worked—and knocked about—and loving—and driven from pillar to post—whereas you're so beautiful—and young—young almost—and—and expensive—and—" a flip of his hand included the room—"with all this as your setting—and everything else—i can't credit it."

she came up to him excitedly. "well, then—what?"

"the only thing we can do, it seems to me, is to try to make it easier for each other. may i ask one question?"

she nodded, mutely.

"would you rather that your little boy was found?—or that he wasn't found?"

she wheeled away, speaking only after a minute's thought, and from the other side of the room. "i'd rather that he was found—of course—if i could be sure that he was found."

"how would you know when you were sure?"

she tapped her heart. "i ought to know it here."

"that's the way i'd know it too."

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"and you don't?"

in a long silence he looked at her. she looked at him. each strove after the mystery which warps the child to the mother, the mother to the child. where was it? what was it? how could you tell it when you saw it? and if you saw it, could you miss it and pass it by? he sought it in her eyes; she sought it in his. they sought it by all the avenues of intuitive, spiritual sight.

she tapped her heart again. her utterance was imperious, insistent, and yet soft.

"and you don't—feel it there?"

he too spoke softly. "no, i don't."

in reluctant dismissal he turned away from her. with her quick little gasp of a sob she turned away from him.