The old man looked at her with pitying keenness. Was this agony a spiritual birth or was it just the old selfishness which had never brooked denial? And if indeed it was a travail of the spirit, would not the soul be stillborn if her son's love should fail to sustain it? Yet why should Johnny love her? . . . Mary was talking and trying not to cry; her words were a fury of pain and protest: "Miss Lydia won't give him up to people who haven't any claim upon him,--I mean any claim that is known. Of course we have a claim--the greatest! But Johnny doesn't know, so he won't consent to take our name--though it is our _right_! He doesn't know any reason for it. You see?" "I see." "I suppose if we told him the truth we could get him. But I'm afraid to tell him. Yet without telling him I can't make him love me! He said I was an 'outsider.' _I!_ his mother! But if he knew there was a reason--" Doctor Lavendar looked out of the window into the yellowing leaves of the old jargonelle-pear tree, and shook his head. "Hearts don't come when Reason whistles to 'em," he said. "Oh, if I could just hear him say 'mother'!" "Why should he say 'mother'? You haven't been a mother to him." "I've given him everything!" Doctor Lavendar was silent. "He _ought_ to come to us. He is ours; and he owes us--" "Just what you've earned, Mary, just what you've earned. That's what children 'owe' their parents." "Oh, what am I to do? What am I to do?" "How much do you want him, Mary?" [Illustration: "HEARTS DON'T ANSWER WHEN REASON WHISTLES TO THEM," HE SAID.] She was stammering with sobs. "It's all I want--it's my life--" "_Perhaps_ publicity would win him. He has a great respect for courage. So perhaps--" She cringed. "But that couldn't be! It couldn't be. Don't you understand?" "Poor Mary!" said Doctor Lavendar. "Poor girl!" "Doctor Lavendar, make him come to us. _You_ can do it. You can do anything!" "Mary, neither you nor I nor anybody else can 'make' a harvest anything but the seed which has been sowed. My child, you sowed vanity and selfishness." . . . By and by he put his hand on hers and said: "Mary, wait. Wait till you love him more and yourself less." It was dark when she went away. When Doctor King came in in the evening he said to himself that Mary Robertson and the whole caboodle of 'em weren't worth the weariness in the wise old face. "William," said Doctor Lavendar, "I hope there won't be any conundrums in heaven; I don't seem able to answer them any more." Then the whimsical fatigue vanished and he smiled. "Lately I've just said, 'Wait: God knows.' And stopped guessing." But he didn't stop thinking. CHAPTER VII