He let her hands fall--and drew away. "I love you too much," he said, "to butt in now. But if the boy goes back on you, Millie, I'll come--again. You'll need me then--and that's why I'll come. I don't want him to go back on you. I want him to love you still. It's because of the way you love him that I love you--in the way I do. It ain't easy for me to say this. It ain't easy for me to want to give you up. But you're that kind of a woman, Millie. You're that kind--since you got the boy. I want to give you up. You'd be better off with him. You're--you're--_holier_--when you're with that child. You'd break your poor heart without that boy of yours. And I want you to have him--to love him--to be loved by him. If he comes back, you'll not see me again. I've lived a life that makes me--not fit--to be with no child like him. But so help me God!" the man passionately declared, "I hope he don't turn you down!" "You're all right, Jim!" she sobbed. "You're all right!" "I'm going now," he said, quietly. "But I got one more thing to say. Don't fool that boy!" She looked up. "Don't fool him," the man repeated. "You'll lose him if you do." "Not fool him? It's so easy, Jim!" "Ah, Millie," he said, with a hopeless gesture, "you're blind. You don't know your own child. You're blind--you're just blind!" "What you mean, Jim?" she demanded. "You don't know what he loves you for." "What does he love me for?" The man was at the door. "Because," he answered, turning, "you're his mother!" It was not yet nine o'clock. The boy would still be in the church. She must not yet set out for the park. So she lighted the lamp. For a time she posed and grimaced before the mirror. When she was perfect in the part, she sat in the rocking-chair at the broad window, there to rehearse the deceptions it was in her mind to practice. But while she watched the threatening shadows gather, the lights on the river flash into life and go drifting aimlessly away, her mind strayed from this purpose, her willful heart throbbed with sweeter feeling--his childish voice, the depths of his eyes, the grateful weight of his head upon her bosom. Why had he loved her? Because she was his mother! A forgotten perception returned to illuminate her way--a perception, never before reduced to formal terms, that her virtue, her motherly tenderness, were infinitely more appealing to him than the sum of her other attractions. She started from the chair--her breast heaving with despairing alarm. Again she stood before the mirror--staring with new-opened eyes at the painted face, the gaudy gown: and by these things she was now horrified. "He won't love me!" she thought. "Not this way. He--he--couldn't!" It struck the hour. "Nine o'clock!" she cried. "I got to _do_ something!"