The hand on Julian’s arm trembled a little. The terrible presence, which is never recognised except by those to whom its chill is as the chill of death, was making itself vaguely felt about his mother’s heart. She let her eyes stray from his face with a painful, tremulous movement, and her fingers tightened round his arm. “It is all over?” she murmured in a low voice. “It is all over, really?” As her self-command failed her his seemed to strengthen. He patted her hand again reassuringly, and said, confidently: “Yes, dear, indeed! I’ve only got to beg your pardon, and I do that with all my heart.” He stooped and kissed her tenderly, and as he did so she seemed to rally her forces with a tremendous effort. She returned his kiss with a pretty, effusive embrace, though her lips were as cold as ice. “I grant it freely,” she said. “And if I’ve felt obliged to be--well, shall we say rather autocratic?--for once in a way, you must forgive me, too, eh?” But the unspoken, terrible reality as it is, was to be touched by no such ghastly travesty. Julian’s laugh was only a firmer echo of his mother’s gay artificiality of tone, but as she heard it her lips turned whiter still. “That’s of course,” he said. “Of course.” “Then it’s all settled!” she responded gaily. “We’ll draw a veil over the past from to-night, and behave better in the future. Good night, dear boy!” She kissed him again, patted him lightly on the shoulder and moved away. On the threshold she stopped, turned, and blew him a kiss over her shoulder. “Forgiveness and oblivion from to-night,” she said; and there was a strange, defiant gaiety in her voice. With another smile and a nod she went upstairs, and as she went her face grew lined and drawn, like the face of an old woman, and the defiance that had lurked in her voice stared out of her eyes, half-wild and reckless. CHAPTER XI It was a bright spring day; one of those days on which the freshness and renewal of life which only spring knows, and for the sake of which even the cold monotony of winter is endurable, seem to be in the very air, and to radiate with the light itself. Even in London, where nature’s broadest effects, only, can be felt, there was a sense of exuberance which was almost excitement. The sun shone with a brightness which seemed to shed oblivion over past darkness. The air was quickening and stirring with vague and limitless possibilities.