He was far from being a bad-looking fellow, however. He had beautiful blue eyes, more like a girl's than a man's, and there was something earnest and winning in his face that often got him a shy glance on the street from passing women. His acquaintance in this direction went no further. Many times when a college acquaintance would have included him in some little party, his mother had peremptorily refused to let him go. Her face would darken with jealousy and anger, nor was she backward with a string of reasons for her refusal. It would unsettle him; he had no money to waste on girls; he would be shamed by his shabby clothes and ungloved hands; they would laugh at him behind his back; was he tired, then, of his old mother who had worked so hard to bring him up decently? And so on and so on, until, without knowing exactly why, Raymond would feel himself terribly in the wrong, and was glad enough at last to be forgiven on the understanding that he would never propose such a reprehensible thing again. In any other young man, brought up in the ordinary way, with the ordinary advantages, such submission would have seemed mean- spirited; but the bond between these two was riveted with memories of penury and privation; any appeal to those black days brought Raymond on his knees; it was intolerable to him that he should ever cause a pang in his dear mother's breast. Thus, at the age when the heart is hungriest for companionship; when for the first time a young man seems to discover the existence of a hitherto unknown and unimportant sex; when an inner voice urges him to take his place in the ranks and keep step with the mighty army of his generation, Raymond was doomed to walk alone, a wistful outcast, regarding his enviable companions from afar. He was in his second year at college when his studies were broken off by his mother's illness. He was suddenly called home to find her delirious in bed, struck down in the full tide of strength by the disease she had taken from a patient. It was scarlet fever, and when it had run its course the doctor took him to one side and told him that his mother's nursing days were over. During her tedious convalescence, as Raymond would sit beside her bed and read aloud to her, their eyes were constantly meeting in unspoken apprehension. They saw the ground, so solid a month before, now crumbling beneath their feet; their struggles, their makeshifts, their starved and meagre life had all been in vain. Their little savings were gone; the breadwinner, tempting fate once too often, had received what was to her worse than a mortal wound, for the means of livelihood had been taken from her. "Could I have but died," she repeated to herself. "Oh, could I have but died!"