I could not utter a word. The beautiful woman smiled at me in a friendly way beneath features like her son’s, timeless and without age, full of an animated will. Her look was fulfillment, her greeting meant home-coming. In silence I stretched out my hands to her. She seized both mine with her strong, warm ones. “You are Sinclair. I knew you at once. I am very glad to see you!” Her voice was deep and warm, I drank it in like sweet wine. And now I looked up in her tranquil face, into the black eyes of unfathomable depth. I looked at her fresh, ripe mouth, queenly forehead, which bore the sign. “How glad I am!” I said to her and kissed her hands. “I believe I have been on my way all my life long--but now I have come home.” She smiled in a motherly way. “One never comes home,” she said gently. “But where friendly roads converge, the whole world looks for an hour like home.” She gave expression to what I myself had felt on my way to her. Her voice and her words were like those of her son, and yet quite different. Everything was more mature, warmer, more assured. But just as Max in years past had made on no one the impression of being a mere boy, so his mother did not look like the mother of a grown-up son, so young and sweet was the breath of her face and hair, so smooth her golden skin, so blossoming her mouth. More queenly still than in my dream she stood before me. Her presence was love’s happiness, her look was fulfillment. This, then, was the new picture, in which my fate displayed itself, no longer severe, no longer isolating, but mature and full of promise. I took no resolutions, I made no vows. I had attained an end, I had reached a point of vantage on the way, from which the further road displayed itself, broad and lovely, leading on to lands of promise, shaded by treetops of happiness near at hand, cooled by gardens of delight. Come what might, I was happy to know of this woman’s existence in the world, to drink in her voice, to sense her presence. Whether she would be to me mother, mistress, goddess--what mattered it as long as she was present! As long as my way lay near to hers! She indicated my picture of the hawk. “You have never given Max more pleasure than by sending this bird,” she said musingly. “And I was pleased as well. We expected you, and when the picture arrived we knew that you were on the way to us. When you were a little boy, Sinclair, my son came one day from school and said: ‘There’s a boy who has the sign on his forehead, he must be my friend.’ That was you. You have not had an easy time of it, but we had confidence in you. Once in the holidays when you were at home, Max met you again. You were at that time about sixteen years old. Max told me----” I interrupted: “Oh, that he should have told you that. It was the most miserable time I have had!”