"Yes. I do mean that. I don't want to be unkind, or unfair. But you must see that I can't discuss--that sort of thing with you." "Why not?" Thoroughly alarmed now, she tried to hide alarm with a smile. "Lots of people do confide in me. I--you know I wouldn't betray your confidence." "Is that quite the point?" Julia Cavendish deigned to plead: "I've been so worried, Ronnie. I feel, somehow, that you're in trouble. I feel I understand why. And I only want you to let me help you." His mood softened. "Poor old mater," he thought. But her next words dispelled softness; irritated him again. "You see," she said, "you're still so young. Only a boy really. You don't know the world as I know it. You mustn't reject my advice." "I'm thirty-six," he parried. "And I'm over sixty." "You don't look it, mater." She felt herself being edged away from her topic. She saw a vision of Aliette Brunton--standing palpably between herself and her son. Vague jealousy clouded her love, her kindness. "You don't deny the correctness of my statement," she shot at him. "You admit that you are in love?" "Suppose I admit that much----" His lean face flushed. "Then the least you can do is to tell me with whom. You say you don't want to be unkind or unfair. Is it fair, or kind, to let me"--Julia hesitated over the word--"suspect things?" He said bluntly, "There is nothing to suspect." She said with equal bluntness, "Then why am I not to be told?" Ronnie's temper rose. He, too, saw a vision of Aliette, palpably demanding his protection. "Because there's nothing to tell." "Ronnie, that's not the truth." The words burst from her. "You've never lied to me before. Why can't you tell me the truth now? Ever since Sunday, I've known----" "Known what?" Her heart dropped a beat at his obvious anger. It was as though she already knew the worst. Love and jealousy, strangely commingling in her ego, ousted--for one flash of a second--all other emotions. So that it might have been an adoring wife rather than a religious mother who answered. "That you and Mrs. Brunton were in love with each other." "So she knew all the time," thought Ronnie. His first feeling was relief. At least the mater knew nothing of what had happened since Sunday. Only her uncanny intuition had led her to the truth. Then fear--no longer fear for himself, but fear for Aliette--keyed his legal brain to defense. "You have no right to make that statement. Where's your proof, your evidence?" She looked him full in the face; noted the blood at his temples, the working nostrils, the angry sparks in his light blue eyes. The effort to stand up against his obstinacy wrenched her in pieces. Her knees, her very stomach trembled. The known room, the beloved things, seemed suddenly worthless. She felt self-reproachfully that she had loved things too much, her son too little. She could have cried, then and there--she who had never let the tears to her eyes.