"It is the step I did not take--that is why I see it so clearly. You must go away. You must take your life into your own hands. You must begin it all over again. Women cannot do that; men can. Only now and then does a woman claim her own personality, and for her the risk is terrible. But a man can do it; he is meant to do it. That is where he finds his greatness." "But that will be to leave you, mother. How can I do that, especially now, when I know what your life has been?" "It is the fate of mothers, dearest, and it is a joyous fate. What matter where you go? I shall still live in you. Don't you see, dear, that my life reaches its height to-night, and through you? I have paid twenty years of loneliness and tears for this hour, and I find the price light. Do you think I grudge a few more years of separation? And they will not be lonely. I have wept my last tears for you. I have triumphed after all, and nothing can rob me of my triumph." The supreme self-abnegation of that speech was too great to be understood all at once. It came upon him by degrees; perhaps it would be true to say that it was only after many years, when he stood beside his mother's grave, that he understood its full significance. But enough of that significance was felt even now to fill his soul with wonder. He saw only the first page in the sacred gospel of motherhood, but he caught its meaning. To ask nothing, to give everything, to purchase momentary rapture with the grief of years, to toil without reward, to love and be forgotten, to yield flesh and heart for the nurture of the seeds of life in others, to create for them the unparticipated victory--that was the destiny of motherhood, a thing not less sacred than the love that once endured the Cross for man. To find himself so loved was an overwhelming thought. Beneath its weight he lay breathless, in an ecstasy of marvel. "Yes, you must go away," she continued. "Shall I tell you why?" "Yes, mother, tell me." "Because if you stay in London you will never find your freedom. In London the net is drawn so close that individuality is strangled. London insists upon conformity. It grinds men down by slow attrition to a common likeness. I have thought it all over. It is because there are cities like London, full of avarice and pleasure, that the best men grow into criminals without knowing it. Your father might have been a good man if he had never seen London. "And there is another reason too. Your father, in spite of his anger, will not give you up. He will try to keep you near him, even though you are not his partner in the business. He will bribe you by his generosity, subdue you by his forgiveness. And he is a strong man, remember, who always gets his own way sooner or later. Don't you know that, Arthur?" "Do you mean that his very love for me is a peril, mother?"