He put her back gently, keeping his eyes on hers. “Did you never tell anybody in this house that you were lecturing to support your son?” Her hands dropped from his shoulders and she flashed round on me in sudden anger. “I know what I think of people who call themselves friends and who come between a mother and her son!” “Oh, mother, mother!” he groaned. I went up to him and laid my hand on his shoulder. “My dear man,” I said, “don’t you see the uselessness of prolonging this?” “Yes, I do,” he answered abruptly; and before I could forestall his movement he rose and walked out of the room. There was a long silence, measured by the lessening reverberations of his footsteps down the wooden floor of the corridor. When they ceased I approached Mrs. Amyot, who had sunk into her chair. I held out my hand and she took it without a trace of resentment on her ravaged face. “I sent his wife a seal-skin jacket at Christmas!” she said, with the tears running down her cheeks. SOULS BELATED Their railway-carriage had been full when the train left Bologna; but at the first station beyond Milan their only remaining companion--a courtly person who ate garlic out of a carpet-bag--had left his crumb-strewn seat with a bow. Lydia’s eye regretfully followed the shiny broadcloth of his retreating back till it lost itself in the cloud of touts and cab-drivers hanging about the station; then she glanced across at Gannett and caught the same regret in his look. They were both sorry to be alone. “_Par-ten-za!_” shouted the guard. The train vibrated to a sudden slamming of doors; a waiter ran along the platform with a tray of fossilized sandwiches; a belated porter flung a bundle of shawls and band-boxes into a third-class carriage; the guard snapped out a brief _Partensa!_ which indicated the purely ornamental nature of his first shout; and the train swung out of the station. The direction of the road had changed, and a shaft of sunlight struck across the dusty red velvet seats into Lydia’s corner. Gannett did not notice it. He had returned to his _Revue de Paris,_ and she had to rise and lower the shade of the farther window. Against the vast horizon of their leisure such incidents stood out sharply. Having lowered the shade, Lydia sat down, leaving the length of the carriage between herself and Gannett. At length he missed her and looked up. “I moved out of the sun,” she hastily explained. He looked at her curiously: the sun was beating on her through the shade. “Very well,” he said pleasantly; adding, “You don’t mind?” as he drew a cigarette-case from his pocket.