He would go to New Orleans at once: he would throw himself at his mother's knees and tell her his failures, his temptations, his griefs: he would get a transfer to some Southern train, he would steal a ride, but he would go. His mother's pride would suffer when she saw what he had become, but he was not bringing her home a shameful story. She would ask to see his beautiful creations--alas! even his ideals were buried under grime and smoke, their voices drowned in whistles and bells! He folded his arms across his breast, the last sheet of the long letter in his hand, and again his room stifled him as it had done before when he had flown out to walk with the Irish girl. The walls closed in upon him. The ceiling seemed to confine him like a coffin lid, and the flickering gas jet over his bureau burned pale like a burial candle.... He groaned, started forward to the door as though he would begin his journey home immediately, but like many a wanderer who starts on his voyage home and finds the old landmarks displaced, before Fairfax could take the first step forward, his course was for ever changed.... He had not heard Molly's knock at the door. The girl came in timidly, holding out a telegram; she brought it as she had brought the other, without comment, but with the Irish presentiment of ill, she remained waiting silently, knowing in her humble breast that she was all he had. Fairfax opened the despatch, held it transfixed, gave a cry and said to Molly, staring her wildly in the eyes: "My mother, my mother!" and went and fell on his knees by his bed and flung his arms across it as though across a beloved form. He shook, agonized for a few moments, then sprang up and stared at the desertion before him, the tears salt on his face and his heart of steel broken. And the girl by the door, where she had clung like a leaf blown there by a wind of grief, came up to him. He felt her take his arm between her hands, he felt her close to him. "It cuts the heart o' me to see ye. It's like death to see ye. Is it your mother gone? The dear mother ye must be like? God knows there's no comfort for that kind, but," she breathed devotedly, "I'd give the life o' me to comfort ye." He hardly heard her, but her presence was all he had. Her human companionship was all that was left him in the world. He put his hand on her shoulder and said brokenly-- "You don't know what this means. It is the end of me, the end. To think I shall never see her again! Oh, _Mother_!" he cried, and threw up his arms. The loving woman put hers about him as the gesture left him shorn of his strength, and when his arms fell they were around her. He held her for a moment as a drowning man holds to that which is flung out to him to save his life; then he pushed her from him. "Let me get out of this. I must get out of the room." "You'll not do anything to yourself? Ah, tell me that." He snatched up his hat and fled from her without reply.