"From that hour our lives were separate. I never again wore my girlish finery; I ate as little as I could; I lived in solitude. I knew that nothing I could say would influence him. I was condemned to futility. It was in that year of our final quarrel you were born. O my boy, can you understand now with what terror I looked at your little innocent face as it lay upon my bosom? For many, many months I wished you dead for fear of what you might become. I have watched the growth of your father's wealth with far deeper alarm than men have ever watched the coming of poverty. I could discern in it nothing but a threat to you. I have wasted myself in tears and prayers for you, all the time telling myself that prayers were in vain. And now--praise be to the God I have insulted!--I find my prayers miraculously answered. Arthur, my son, you have stood the test. Your soul has overcome the forces of your blood. I live to-night, I live for the first time in twenty years, and God restores to me the years that the locust has eaten." Her impassioned speech thrilled him like the note of rapture in the voice of a saint. And as she spoke, with that pale moonlight lighting her face like a flame, it was as though the saint's halo rested on her brow; she was the creature of a vision, ineffably pure and tender, clothed in the eternal sacredness of motherhood. He had rested his head upon her bosom while he wept; he knelt now, and laid it on her knees. "O my son, my son," she cried, "I planned for this long before you were born, but I never thought it would come true. It was for this I chastened myself with tears and fasting, hoping that the life I nourished might be freed from the stain I feared. But I had no faith. I could only bring God my timidity; I could only plead my agony; I had no strength to bring to Him. Yet He heard me, and after all the doubting years He has given me the desire of my heart." "And I never understood," he whispered. "But you understand now, and I am repaid in full," she answered. "When I saw you go out with your father to-night into the office, I knew the great battle of your life had come, and something told me you would not fail." "Yet I did fail, mother. He made me feel that I had wronged him." "I know. He told me." "He said I had behaved like a bad-hearted little boy. He humbled me to the dust." "I know that too. That is why I came to you, my dear. I knew that you would need me." "I do need you, mother. Everything is dark and perplexed to me. It seems that though I have done right, I have done it in the wrong way." "The great thing is to have done right. That atones for everything with God, I think." "But I don't see the next step, mother." "We never do, till we take it. But I can see it. Shall I tell you what it is?" "Yes, mother."