"Then," persisted Lynn, with remorseless logic, "I am not too young, and neither is Iris--only she doesn't care." "She may care, son." "No, she won't. She despises me." "And why?" "She said I had no heart." "The idea!" "Maybe I didn't have then, but I'm sure I have now." He walked back and forth restlessly. Margaret knew that the griefs of youth are cruelly keen, because they come well in the lead of the strength to bear them. She was about to offer the usual threadbare consolation, "You will forget in time," when she remembered the stock of which Lynn came. His mother, who had carried a secret wound for more than twenty-five years, who was she, to talk about forgetting, and, of all others, to her son? Gratitude was still dominant, though in her heart of hearts she knew that she was selfish. Lynn felt the lack of sympathy, and became conscious, for the first time in his life, that her tenderness had a limit. "Mother," he said, suddenly, "did you love father?" "Why do you ask, son?" "Because I want to know." "I respected him highly," said Margaret, at length. "He was a good man, Lynn." "You have answered," he returned. "You don't know--you don't understand." "But I do understand," she flashed. "You can't, if you didn't love father." "I--I cared for someone else," said Margaret, thickly, unwilling to be convicted of shallowness. Lynn looked at her quickly. "And you still care?" Margaret bowed her head. "Yes," she whispered, "I still care!" "Mother!" he cried. In an instant, his arms were around her and she was sobbing on his shoulder. "Mother," he pleaded, "forgive me! To think I never knew!" They had a long talk then, intimate and searching. "You have borne it bravely," he said. "No one has ever dreamed of it, I am sure. The Master told me, the other day, that I must not be afraid of life. He said that everything, even our blessings, came to us through pain." "I would not say everything," temporised Margaret, "but it is true that much comes that way. We know happiness only by contrast." "Happiness and misery, light and dark, sunshine and storm, life and death," mused Lynn. "Yes, it is by contrast, but, as the Master says, 'the balance swings true.' I wish you knew him, mother; he has helped me. I never knew my father, so it is not wrong for me to say that I wish he might have been my father." Margaret grew as cold as ice, and her senses reeled, then flame swept her from head to foot. "Come," she said, not knowing her own voice, "it is late." Long afterward, in the solitude of her room, she took the precious thought from its hiding-place, and found it purest gold. It was as though all the bitterness in her heart, growing upward, through the years, had flowered overnight into a perfect rose. XVIII Lynn Comes Into His Own