“But it was for me you did it, St. George. I would rather think of it that way; it makes it easier. Say you did it for me.” St. George stooped down, raised her thin white hand to his lips, kissed it reverently, and without a word of any kind walked to the door of his bedroom and shut it behind him. Mrs. Rutter's hand dropped to her lap and a smile of intense relief passed over her face. She neither looked after St. George, nor did she offer any explanation to Harry; she merely bent forward and continued her caresses, stroking the boy's glossy hair, patting the white temples with her delicate fingers, smoothing the small, well-set ears and the full brown throat, kissing his forehead, her eyes reading his face, wondering if she had spoken too freely and yet regretting nothing: what she had said had come straight from her heart and she was not ashamed of it. The boy lay still, his head against her breast. That his mother had been stirred even in a greater degree over what St. George had said to her than she had been by his father's treatment of him was evident in the trembling movement of the soft hands caressing his hair and in the way her breath came and went. Under her soothing touch his thoughts went back to the events of the morning:--his uncle's defiant tones as he denounced his father; his soft answer to his mother; her pleading words in reply, and then the reverent kiss. Suddenly, clear as the tones of a far-off convent bell sifting down from some cloud-swept crag, there stole into his mind a memory of his childhood--a legend of long ago, vague and intangible--one he could not put into words--one Alec had once hinted at. He held his breath trying to gather up the loose ends--to make a connected whole; to fit the parts together. Then, as one blows out a candle, leaving total darkness, he banished it all from his mind. “Mother dear!--mother dear!” he cried tenderly, and wound his arms the closer about her neck. She gathered him up as she had done in the old days when he was a child at her breast; all the intervening years seemed blotted out. He was her baby boy once more--her constant companion and unending comfort: the one and only thing in her whole life that understood her. Soon the warmth and strength of the full man began to reach her heart. She drew him still closer, this strong son who loved her, and in the embrace there grew a new and strange tenderness--one born of confidence. It was this arm which must defend her now; this head and heart which must guide her. She was no longer adrift. The two had not moved when St. George re-entered the room some moments later. Harry's head still lay on her breast, the thin, transparent hands tight about his neck. CHAPTER XII