If only she could have said it all differently! But alas! yearning over him with agonized consciousness of her own wrong-doing, and with singular justice in regard to his, she approached his selfish heart as if it were one of her own "blooms," and she a great engine which could mold and squeeze it into something of value to the world. She flung her iron facts at him, regardless of the bruises they must leave upon that most precious thing, his self-respect. Well; she was going to stop her work of destruction, she said. Then she told him how she proposed to do it: he had had everything--and he was nothing. Now he should have nothing, so that he might become something. There was a day, many years ago, when this mother and son, standing together, had looked at the fierce beauty of molten iron; then she had told him of high things hidden in the seething and shimmering metal--of dreams to be realized, of splendid toils, of vast ambitions. And as she spoke, a spark of vivid understanding had leaped from his mind to hers. Now, her iron will, melted by the fires of love, was seething and glowing, dazzlingly bright in the white heat of complete self-renunciation; it was ready to be poured into a torturing mold to make a tool with which he might save his soul! But no spark of understanding came into his angry eyes. She did not pause for that; his agreement was a secondary matter. The habit of success made her believe that she could achieve the impossible--namely, save a man's soul in spite of himself; "make," as she had told Robert Ferguson, "a man of her son." She would have been glad to have his agreement, but she would not wait for it. Blair listened in absolute silence. "Do I understand," he said when she had finished, "that you mean to disinherit me?" "I mean to give you the finest inheritance a young man can have: _the necessity for work!_--and work for the necessity. For, of course, your job is open to you in the office. But it will be at an honest salary after this; the salary any other unskilled man would get." "Please make yourself clear," he said laconically; "you propose to leave me no money when you die?" "Exactly." "May I ask how you expect me to live?" "The way most decent men live--_by work_. You can work; or else, as I said, you can starve. There's a verse in the Bible--you don't know your Bible very well; perhaps that's one reason you have turned out as you have; but there's a verse in the Bible that says if a man won't work, he sha'n't eat. That's the best political economy I know. But I never thought of it before," she said simply; "I never realized that the worst handicap a young man can have in starting out in life is a rich father--or mother. Ferguson used to tell me so, but somehow I never took it in." "So," he said--he was holding his cane in both hands, and as he spoke he struck it across his knees, breaking it with a splintering snap; "so, you'll disinherit me because I married the girl I love?"