"Oh, she didn't talk about you at all! It wasn't that kind of talk--not about what she had done--not even about what she meant to do! She is so young! She is just like a girl! And she speaks so charmingly, with the loveliest voice. It's like the way the water ripples round the big boulders at The Run." "She hadn't anything to say about her going off? I don't quite believe you mean that, Phil." "That's exactly the truth, daddy"; and there was grieved surprise in her tone. "Why, she isn't like that; she wouldn't ever say anything to hurt any one. I haven't words to tell you about her, because there was never any one like her. She is all sunniness and sweetness. And she's the most amusing person I ever saw,--ever so droll and funny!" Phil's refusal or inability to see her mother in robes of sin irritated Kirkwood. For Phil to call her an amusing person was sheer childish naivete. Phil was the victim of an infatuation which he could understand now that his wife began to live again in his imagination. He had read in books that the maternal instinct will assert itself after long separations, where mother and child are without other clue than that of the mysterious filial and maternal tie to guide them; but his practical sense rejected the idea. If he had been warned of Lois's unaccountable return, he might have fortified Phil against her charms, but now it was too late. Lois was Phil's mother. Shocked as he was by this termination of his Christmas-Day happiness, his nature revolted against any attempt to shatter Phil's new idol. The fact that Lois had sinned as much against Phil as against himself was not something that he could urge now that Phil had taken her stand. The thought of Lois brought before him not only the unhappy past, but she seemed, with the cruelest calculation, to have planted herself in the path of his happy future.