One morning, drawn early to the cool solitude of the river after a sleepless night, she saw her boy bathing, a slim white figure without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, with every muscle developed, and skin like satin, shining purely against the deep banks and undergrowth; a picture framed by pines, through which the light of the autumn dawn came slowly. Hidden from him, she watched with look wide and tender, with eyes as moist as the supple limbs from which he shook the water of the burn, standing strong and vigorous, breathing quickly after his swim, unconsciously rejoicing in his power. Bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, she thrilled again with proud remembrance that she had borne pain for him and given him life.... Then his characteristic gesture the impatient pushing of the wet hair from his forehead, reminded her suddenly of his brother. She shrank back as if a spirit of evil pursued her. Between herself and God there was a wall too high for mercy or prayers to pierce. Her religion forbade her to pray for her dead—prayers for the dead were heresy. In the blindness of her despair she invented a species of soul crucifixion striking with almost frenzied agony at the root of her love for Richard. He at least should never know how she loved him; discipline and duty should be the twin lights to guide his way, never the false light of a selfish love. After this she instituted a new and more terrible rule of discipline, both for herself and her son. Richard came to her daily as before, but now even the conventional kiss was denied him, and three hours’ study of complicated points of doctrine took its place. The fate of sinners was the prevailing theme, the punishment of sins of whose very existence he was unaware. In the narrow hot room he would stand rebellious, either answering at random or not answering at all. Outside, bees hummed and birds sang, and insect life was joyous. The world he loved stretched very far in infinite fairness, God’s exquisite world that had hitherto raised his thoughts to its Maker. "His brother the wind, his sister the earth," had seemed to point the way to a God worth loving. But how could he but hate the dreadful God of the ancient law into whose power it was so terrible to fall, the God who raised His hands only to strike, who broke the heart of His children as men break stones by the wayside, and had so little pity for the innocent child of shame? Yet this was the God with whom he was brought in hourly contact, this Being who saw evil where Richard was convinced no evil was. Why was it wrong, for instance, to love inanimate things so passionately, to weep at a bird’s death and rejoice at its birth? Why should not his face light up at sight of the small furred and feathered things, which were his only friends? He would escape for hours to be in their company, and pay the penalty for such adventures later, when, sought for with terror, he was met with punishment and humiliation.