She could find nothing to say to him: the truth that lay so icily upon her heart was all that she could have said: "I am your guilty mother. I robbed you of your father. And your father is dead, unmourned, unloved, almost forgotten by me." For that was the poison in her misery, to know that for Paul Quentin she felt almost nothing. To hear that he had died was to hear that a ghost had died. What would Augustine say to her if the truth were spoken? It was now a looming horror between them. It shut her from him and it shut him away. "Oh, do come out," said Augustine after a moment: "the evening's so fine: it will do you good; and there's still a bit of sunset to be seen." She shook her head, looking away from him. "Is it really so bad as that?" "Yes; very bad." "Can't I do anything? Get you anything?" "No, thank you." "I'm so sorry," said Augustine, and, suddenly, but gravely, deliberately, he stooped and kissed her. "Oh--don't!--don't!" she gasped. She thrust him away, turning her face against the chair. "Don't: you must leave me.--I am so unhappy." The words sprang forth: she could not repress them, nor the gush of miserable tears. If Augustine was horrified he was silent. He stood leaning over her for a moment and then went out of the room. She lay fallen in her chair, weeping convulsively. The past was with her; it had seized her and, in her panic-stricken words, it had thrust her child away. What would happen now? What would Augustine say? What would he ask? If he said nothing and asked nothing, what would he think? She tried to gather her thoughts together, to pray for light and guidance; but, like a mob of blind men locked out from sanctuary, the poor, wild thoughts only fled about outside the church and fumbled at the church door. Her very soul seemed shut against her. She roused herself at last, mechanically telling herself that she must go through with it; she must dress and go down to dinner and she must find something to say to Augustine, something that would make what had happened to them less sinister and inexplicable. --Unless--it seemed like a mad cry raised by one of the blind men in the dark,--unless she told him all, confessed all; her guilt, her shame, the truths of her blighted life. She shuddered; she cowered as the cry came to her, covering her ears and shutting it out. It was mad, mad. She had not strength for such a task, and if that were weakness--oh, with a long breath she drew in the mitigation--if it were weakness, would it not be a cruel, a heartless strength that could blight her child's life too, in the name of truth. She must not listen to the cry. Yet strangely it had echoed in her, almost as if from within, not from without, the dark, deserted church; almost as if her soul, shut in there in the darkness, were crying out to her. She turned her mind from the sick fancy.