Yes, she almost cried aloud in the dark room. "Give me Falk and I will leave the other. Give me my own son. That's my right--every mother's right. If I am refused it, it is just that I should take what I can get instead." "Give him to me! Give him to me!" One thing at least was certain. She could never return to the old lethargy. That first meeting with Morris had fired her into life. She could not go back and she was glad that she could not.... She stopped in the middle of the room to listen. The hall-door closed softly; suddenly the line of light below the door vanished. Some one had turned down the hall-lamp. She went to the drawing-room door, opened it, looked out, crying softly: "Falk! Falk!" "Yes, mother." He came across to her. He was holding a lighted candle in his hand. "Are you still up?" "Yes, it isn't very late. Barely eleven. Come into the drawing-room." They went back into the room. He closed the door behind him, then put the candle down on to a small round table; they sat in the candle-light, one on either side of the table. He looked at her and thought how small and fragile she looked and how little, anyway, she meant to him. How much most mothers meant to their sons, and how little she had ever meant to him! He had always taken his father's view of her, that it was necessary for her to be there, that she naturally did her best, but that she did not expect you to think about her. "You ought to be in bed," he said, wishing that she would release him. For the first time in her life she spoke to him spontaneously, losing entirely the sense that she had always had, that both he and his father would go away and leave her if she were tiresome. To-night he would _not_ go away--not until she had struck her bargain with him. "What have you been up to all these weeks, Falk?" she asked. "Up to?" he repeated. Her challenge was unexpected. "Yes; of course I know you're up to something, and you _know_ that I know. You must tell me. I'm your mother and I ought to be told." He knew at once as soon as she spoke that she was the very last person in the world to whom he wished to tell anything. He was tired, dead tired, and wanted to go to bed, but he was arrested by the urgency in her voice. What was the matter with her? So intent had he been, for the past months, on his own affairs that he had not thought of his mother at all. He looked across the table at her--a little insignificant woman, colourless, with no personality. And yet to-night something was happening to her. He felt all the impatience of a man who is closely occupied with his own drama but is forced, quite against his will, to consider some one else. "There isn't anything to tell you, mother. Really there is not. I've just been kicking my heels round this blasted town for the last few months and I'm restless. I'll be going up to London very shortly." "Why need you?" she asked him. The candle flame seemed to jump with the sharpness of her voice.