“You have never seen your father before. There he is.” She drew a deep sigh, as if she had been too intent to breathe naturally. All her self-consciousness suddenly was gone. And Paul remembered his dream, that had goaded him out of sleep, and vanished with the shock of waking. It gave him the key to this long-expected moment of confidence. “The old likeness has come back,” his mother repeated, with that new quietness which restored her to herself. “I dreamed of that likeness,” said Paul, “only it was much stronger--startling--so that the room was full of whispers and exclamations as the neighbors--there were hundreds of them--filed past. And you stood there, mother, flushed, and talking to each person who passed and looked at him and then at you; you said--you”-- Mrs. Bogardus raised her head. “I know! I have been thinking all night. Am I to do that? Is that what you wish me to do? Don't hesitate--to spare me.” “Mother! I could not imagine you doing such a thing. It was like insanity. I wanted to tell you how horrible, how unseemly it was, because I was sure you had been dwelling on some form--some outward”-- “No,” she said. “I know how I should face this if it were left to me. But you are my only earthly judge, my son. Judge now between us two. Ask of me anything you think is due to him. As to outsiders, what do they matter! I will do anything you say.” “_I_ say! Oh, mother! Every hand he loved was against him--bruising his gentle will. Each one of us has cast a stone upon his grave. But you took the brunt of it. You spoke out plain the denial that was in my coward's heart from the first. And I judged you! I--who uncovered my father's soul to ease my own conscience, and put him to shame and torture, and you to a trial worse than death. Now let us think of the whole of his life. I have much to tell you. You could not listen before; but now he is listening. I speak for him. This is how he loved us!” In hard, brief words Paul told the story of his father's sin and self-judgment; his abdication in the flesh; what he esteemed the rights to be of a woman placed as he had placed his wife; how carefully he had guarded her in those rights, and perjured himself at the last to leave her free in peace and honor with her children. She listened, not weeping, but with her great eyes shining in her pallid face. “All that came after,” said Paul, taking her cold hands in his--“after his last solemn recantation does not touch the true spirit of his sacrifice. It was finished. My father died to us then as he meant to die. The body remained--to serve out its time, as he said. But his brain was tired. I do not think he connected the past very clearly with the present. I think you should forget what has happened here. It was a hideous net of circumstance that did it.”