In this room were odds and ends of furniture, a few pictures not ill-chosen--pictures not in crude colors, but good blacks and whites. Woman or girl, Aurora Lane had had her own longings for the great things, the beautiful things of life, for the wide world which she never was to see. Her taste for good things was instinctive, perhaps hereditary. Had she herself not been an orphan, perhaps she had not dared the attempt to orphan her own son. There were books and magazines upon the table, mixed in with odds and ends of scraps of work sometimes brought hither; the margin between her personal and her professional life being a very vague matter. Back of this central room, through the open door, showed the small white bed in the tiny sleeping room. At the side of this was the yet more tiny kitchen where Aurora Lane all these years had cooked for herself and washed for herself and drawn wood and water for herself. She had no servant, or at least usually had not. Daily she wrought a woman's miracles in economy. Year by year she had, in some inscrutable fashion, been able to keep up appearances, and to pay her bills, and to send money to her son--her son whom she had not seen in twenty years--her son for whom her eyes and her heart ached every hour of every day. She sewed. She made hats. What wonder if the scarlet of the hat in the window had faded somewhat--and what wonder if the scarlet of the letter on her bosom had faded even more?... Because it had all been for him, her son, her first-born. And he must never, never know! He must have his chance in the world. Though the woman should fail, at least the man must not. So it was thus that, heavy-hearted enough now, she brought him to see the place where his mother had lived these twenty years. And now he knew about it, must know. It took all her courage--the last drop of her splendid, unflinching woman-courage. "Come in, Don," she said. "Welcome home!" He looked about him, still frowning with what was on his mind. "Home?" said he. "Don!" she said softly. "Tough work, wasn't it, waiting for me to get through, dear Mom? For I know you did wait. I know you meant that some day----" He laid a hand on her head, his lips trembling. He knew he was postponing, evading. She shrank back in some conviction also of postponing, evading. All her soul was honest. She hated deceit--though all her life she had been engaged in this glorious deceit which now was about to end. "Tough sometimes, yes," she said, smiling up at him. "But don't you like it?" "If my dad had lived," said Don, "or if he had had very much to give either of us, you'd never have lived this way at all. Too bad he died, wasn't it, Mom?" He smiled also, or tried to smile, yet restraint was upon them both, neither dared ask why. She caught up his hand suddenly, spying upon it a strand of blood. "Don!" she exclaimed, wiping it with her kerchief, "you are hurt!"