"So this, Arthur, is the reward you propose for all that has been done for you!--for the time, the thought, the money that has been showered upon you--" He looked at her from under his eyebrows, unmoved. "I should have remembered all that, mother, if you--Look here! Have you ever let me, in anything--for one day, one hour--call my soul my own--since I went into Parliament? It's true I deceived you about Enid. I was literally _afraid_ to tell you--there! You've brought me to that! And when a man's afraid of a woman--it somehow makes a jelly of him--altogether. It was partly what made me run after Enid--at first--that I was doing something independent of you--something you would hate, if you knew. Beastly of me, I know!--but there it was. And then you arranged that meeting here, without so much as giving me a word's notice!--you told Page _before you told me_. And when I kicked--and told you about Enid--did you ever come afterward and talk to me nicely about her?--did you ever, even, consider for one moment what I told you?--that I was in love with her?--dead gone on her? Even if I was rude to you that day when you dragged it out of me, most mothers, I think, would have been sorry for a fellow--" His voice suddenly broke; but he instantly recovered himself. "Instead of that, mother--you only thought of how you could thwart and checkmate me--how you could get _your_ way--and force me to give up mine. It was _abominable_ of you to go and see Enid, without a word to me!--it was _abominable_ to plot and plan behind my back, and then to force yourself on her and insult her to her face! Do you think a girl of any spirit whatever would put herself in your clutches after that? No!--she didn't want to come it too hard on you--that's her way!--so she made up some tale about Glenwilliam. But it's as plain as the nose in your face! You've ruined me!--you've ruined me!" He began to walk furiously up and down, beside himself again with rage and pain. Lady Coryston dropped into a chair. Her large, blanched face expressed a passion that even at this supreme moment, and under the sense of doom that was closing on her, she could not restrain. "It is not I who have ruined you, Arthur--as you put it--though of course you're not ruined at all!--but your own wanton self-will. Are you really so lost to all decency--all affection--that you can speak to your mother like this?" He turned and paused--to throw her an ugly look. "Well--I don't know that I'm more of a brute than other men--but it's no good talking about affection to me--after this. Yes, I suppose you've been fond of me, mother, in your way--and I suppose I've been fond of you. But the fact is, as I told you before, I've stood in _fear_ of you!--all my life--and lots of things you thought I did because I was fond of you, I did because I was a coward--a disgusting coward!--who ought to have been kicked. And that's the truth! Why, ever since I was a small kid--"