“Mother, dear--I know--father has been frightening you all this time--terrifying you. And you were all alone. If only I had been there--if only there had been some one--” Her voice was very faint. “Yes ... he has frightened me all these years. At first I used to think that he didn't mean it. I was a bright, merry sort of a girl then--careless and knowing nothing about the world. And then I began to see--that he liked it--that it gave him pleasure to have something there that he could hurt. And then I began to be frightened. It was very lonely here for a girl who had had a gay time, and he usen't to like my going to Truro--and at last he even stopped my seeing people in Treliss. And then I began to be really frightened--and used to wake in the night and see him standing by the door watching me. Then I thought that when you were born that would draw us together, but it didn't, and I was always ill after that. He would do things--Oh!” her hand pressed her mouth. “Peter, dear, you mustn't think about it, only when I am dead I don't want you to think that I was quite a fool--if they tell you so. I don't want you to think it was all his fault either because it wasn't--I was silly and didn't understand sometimes ... but it's killed me, that dreadful waiting for him to do something, I never knew what it would be, and sometimes it was nothing ... but I knew that he liked to hurt ... and it was the expectation.” In that white room, now flaming with the fires of the setting sun, Peter caught his mother to his breast and held her there and her white hands clutched his knees. Then his eyes, softened and he turned to her and arranged her head on the pillow and drew the sheets closely about her. “I must go now. It has been bad for you this talking, but it had to be. I'm never, never going to leave you again--you shall not be alone any more--” “Oh, Peter! I'm so happy! I have never been so happy... but it all comes of being a coward. If I had only been brave--never be afraid of anybody or anything. Promise me, Peter--” “Except of myself,” he answered, kissing her. “Kiss me again.... And again...” “To-morrow...” he looked back at her, smiling. He saw her, for an instant, as he left the room, with her cheek against the pillow and her black hair like a cloud about her; the twilight was already in the room. An hour later, as he stood in the dining-room, the door opened and his father came in. “You have been with your mother?” “Yes.” “You have done her much harm. She is dying.” “I know everything,” Peter answered, looking him in the face. IV He would never, until his own end had come, forget that evening. The golden sunset gave place to a cold and windy night, and the dark clouds rolled up along the grey sky, hiding and then revealing the thin and pallid moon. Peter stayed there in the dining-room, waiting. His grandfather slept in his chair. Once his aunt came crying into the room and wandered aimlessly about. “Aunt, how is she?”