“You are terribly changed, Basil,” she said, sadly. “I have long known--by intuition, for I was never told so--that your marriage had been an unhappy one; but for you, a man like you” (the tone was emphatic) “to make your child pay for this, to deprive him of a father’s love and refuse even to see him for an hour, is iniquitous. I am sorry to speak so rudely to you, Basil, but I cannot help it.” “You are not rude,” he contradicted. “What you say is from your point of view right and fair, but--appearances are against me, whether justly or unjustly, I can’t say. God! Do you think that I have not fought against that--feeling which estranges me from Piotr? I have sweated blood and water; I have....” With sudden alarm Marguerite swerved toward him and with one small hand on his sleeve stared blankly at him. “Are you crazy, Basil, to talk like this?” she asked. “Estranged from your own flesh and blood, your own little son, the dearest, sweetest little chap that ever was? Shame on you, I say, for letting yourself go as you do, for acting in a hysterical way unworthy of even the weakest woman!” Her cheeks pink, her eyes sparkling with excitement, she was a revelation as she drew back from him in downright anger. Never had he imagined her to be capable of such a transformation. “You make me boil!” she went on, clenching her little fists. “Don’t you know that Piotr adores you? That he is _you_, your very image, although his coloring is more like his mother’s? Oh, Basil, your own little son! How dare you think of making him responsible! Why, he is _you! you! you!_” With a smothered oath Basil leaped to his feet, white as his sporting-cravat. “What makes you act so?” she asked, rising quickly and trying to confront him; but he turned his back upon her and pushed off her detaining hand. “Have you gone distracted?” she asked, and then stopped appalled, for his shoulders were shaking suspiciously. Trembling like a leaf, she stepped back in positive terror. She had never seen a man cry, and it is a sorrowful experience indeed when the man _is_ a man. “Basil,” she whispered. “Basil! Please! Please don’t! I did not mean to hurt you.... Oh, please forgive me, Basil!” Struggling furiously with himself, cursing his fool’s behavior with all the might of his being, he could not at first wrest the mastery, but in a few short moments he turned toward her, and in an almost inaudible voice begged her pardon. “My pardon!” she tremulously murmured. “Mine? It is I who was in the wrong to torment you as I did. You know best what to do, of course. No doubt you have your reasons--reasons you will not tell me, although I think you should. But I am stupid--I know that--so don’t remember what I said. Leave us Piotr. We will look after him well, and teach him how to love you more and more every day, so that when you come home at last this strange feeling of yours will be gone.”