He spent an hour over it, and in the end his passionate eagerness had grown rather than diminished. He put his hand up to his forehead and brushed away drops of moisture, his throat was dry, and his eyes strained. "There's something to be brought out of it yet," he said, as he had said before. "It _can_ be done, I swear!" The words had scarcely left his lips before he heard behind him a low, but sharp cry--a miserable ejaculation, half uttered. He had not heard the door open, nor the entering footsteps; but he knew what the cry meant the moment he heard it. He turned about and saw his mother standing on the threshold. If he had been detected in the commission of a crime, he could not have felt a sharper pang than he did. He almost staggered against the wall and did not utter a word. For a moment they looked at each other in a dead silence. Each wore in the eyes of the other a new aspect. She pointed to the model. "It has come back," she said. "I knew it would." The young fellow turned and looked at it a little stupidly. "I--didn't mean to hurt you with the sight of it," he said. "I took it out because--because----" She stopped him with a movement of her head. "Yes, I know," she said. "You took it out because it has haunted you and tempted you. You could not withstand it. It is in your blood." He had known her through all his life as a patient creature, whose very pains had bent themselves and held themselves in check, lest they should seem for an hour to stand in the way of the end to be accomplished. That she had, even in the deepest secrecy, rebelled against fate, he had never dreamed. She came to the table and struck the model aside with one angry blow. "Shall I tell you the truth?" she cried, panting. "_I have never believed in it for an hour--not for one hour!_" He could only stammer out a few halting words. "This is all new to me," he said. "I did not know----" "No, you did not know," she answered. "How should you, when I lived my whole life to hide it? I have been stronger than you thought. I bore with him, as I should have borne with him if he had been maimed or blind--or worse than that. _I_ did not hurt him--he had hurt enough. I knew what the end would be. He would have been a happy man and I a happy woman, if it had not been for _that_, and there it is again. I tell you," passionately, "there is a curse on it!" "And you think," he said, "that it has fallen upon me?" She burst into wild tears. "I have told myself it would," she said. "I have tried to prepare myself for its coming some day; but I did not think it would show itself so soon as this." "I don't know why," he said slowly. "I don't know--what there is in _me_ that I should think I might do what he left undone. There seems a kind of vanity in it." "It is not vanity," she said; "it is worse. It is what has grown out of my misery and his. I tell you it is in your blood." A flush rose to his face, and a stubborn look settled upon him.