She moaned and moaned; then seemed to listen. “Too late?” My arms were held down in anguish, to entreat this dimming phantom as it fell from me. “O! if you had but said it a year, a month, a week ago! Useless now. Why have you hated me so?” “Not hated--no.” “What then? Was it love forbade that word to pass my lips, or shame? It is not like a woman to make her child the scapegoat of her sin. Or perhaps it was only that you hated to be reminded through that spoken word of a falsehood to which its utterance would have seemed a perpetual rebuke? I was the pledge to you of nothing but the lie on which you had bartered--yes, I use the term to _you_--on which you had bartered away your soul?” She shivered and sighed most miserably. “Kill me with your scorn,” she muttered. “I have deserved it.” “Did you not hate me?” I cried, in great emotion. “Do you not hate me now?” “I feared you,” she said low. “I always feared you from the first. I think you have shown me why. You seemed strange--a thing I had no part in. I never felt like a mother to you--God knows I could not help it. It seemed hard I should be denied redemption for one so strange to me.” I listened with a stricken heart. Had she been so much to blame after all, since some subtle instinct in her, unconscious of itself, had fore-read the truth? God knew, indeed, she could not help it. “And now,” she went on dully, “have you not revenge enough? Look at me--think of me; my position, my example, my--my motherhood--and all at his mercy! You have me at your feet at last, Richard. You have watched to some purpose, as you say.” “Yes, to some purpose,” I answered, “if only I can save you from the consequences of that deceit.” She seemed to listen in wonder; then shook her head, working her hands together feverishly. “I don’t know what you mean. These are the wages of sin. Death is the only thing that can cure my shame and my disgrace. O, where is the atonement in long years of lip service, if while we speak the penitence we live the lie! I told you once your touch contaminated your little brother--_I_ told you _that_! It was a wicked spite, and God has punished me for it. But _you_ haven’t forgiven me.” I stooped and seized her hands fiercely into mine. She made no resistance, only hiding her face from me. “If I have watched you through these long years,” I said, “what was it for but to study how to win your love? Did it never strike you how the little cold soul was shivering outside the window, crying for that warmth and comfort within? ‘Mother!’ Never to have spoken it--not once! Never to have the right to speak it now. Yes, it was a wicked, cruel word. I thought I should never forgive you for it--once I thought it; and now----” Her tears ran hot over my hands. I felt a savage exultation in their flowing. Was she not melting to me at last? I clutched her still the fiercer.