"My dear mother, have you been under the impression that I am a saint?" he said, dryly. "If so let me correct you. I am not. Yes, until I went out there in May I always had the feeling that I would get her, somehow, some time." He paused; his knife scraped the bowl of his pipe until the fresh wood showed under the blade. "I don't know that I ever exactly admitted it to myself; but I realize now that the feeling was there." "You shock me very much," she said; and leaning against her knee he felt the quiver that ran through her. "I have shocked myself several times in the last few years," he said, briefly. His mother was silent. Suddenly he began to talk: "At first--I mean when it happened; I thought she would send for me, and I would take her away from him, and then kill him." Her broken exclamation made him laugh. "Don't worry; I was terribly young in those days. I got over all that. It was only just at first; it was the everlasting human impulse. The cave-dweller had it, I suppose, when somebody stole his woman. But it's only the body that wants to kill. The mind knows better. The mind knows that life can be a lot better punishment than death. I knew he'd get his punishment and I was willing to wait for it. I thought that when she left him, his hell would be as hot as mine. I took it for granted that she would leave him. I thought there would be a divorce, and then"--his voice was smothered to the breaking-point; "then I would get her. Or I would get her without a divorce." "David!" He did not seem to hear her; his elbows were on his knees, his chin on his two fists; he spoke as if to himself; "Well; she didn't leave him. I suppose she couldn't forgive me. Curious, isn't it? how the mind can believe two entirely contradictory things at the same time: I realized she couldn't forgive me,--yet I still thought I would get her, somehow. Meantime, I consoled myself with the reflection that even if she hated me for having pushed her into his arms, she hated him worse. I thought that where I had been stabbed once, he would be stabbed a thousand times." David spoke with that look of primitive joy which must have been on the face of the cave-dweller when he felt the blood of his enemy spurt warm between his fingers. Helena Richie gave a little cry and shrank back. These were the thoughts that her boy had built up between them in these silent years! He gave her a faintly amused glance. "Yes, I had my dreams. Bad dreams you would call them, Materna. Now I don't dream any more. After I saw her in May, I got all over such nonsense. I realized that perhaps she . . . loved him." His mother was trembling. "It frightens me that you should have had such thoughts," she said. She actually looked frightened; her leaf-brown eyes were wide with terror.