"Ah, you know what I mean. You've lost your only son. Give me some of his privileges." She jerked away her head, as she did when she was moved, and wanted not to betray the fact. "I am tired of being homeless," Ethan said. "You will make a home of your own, my dear." "I want this for my home." She turned suddenly, and looked at him with eyes that were keen and intent under their film of tears. "No," she said, slowly, "this does for us. It is not the kind of home for you." "It is the kind I want." He smiled in that sudden, radiant way of his. "No; the Fort is here to shelter and protect other people. You don't need it." "But I do; and it's _my_ Fort. Why, you've never even taken my name off the door." The old woman recalled a glimpse she had had the evening before of Val laying her cheek against the graven name. "I'm not sure but I _shall_ take it off," she said, half smiling, half threatening. "You don't want to get me out of the habit of thinking of the Fort as 'home'?" "You've never really been in the habit--you belong elsewhere." He studied her in perplexity. "Do you realize that at this moment the rain is coming in floods into Uncle John's room?" "The rain won't trouble your uncle John." She had turned away again. "But there are others here--" "It is those others I have to consider. Your uncle John's insurance will mend his children's roof." "And you won't give me the happiness--" "My dear boy," she said, with some impatience, "your happiness doesn't lie here." She began to rock back and forth with lowering brow. "You want to get rid of me." She stopped rocking, and turned to him with a moved and gentler aspect. "Personally, I very much want you to stay; but there are many things to think of. I am not alone here. You bring an atmosphere of--of unrest from out the world you belong to. I see the danger that you may import some of it into our quiet lives." "How little you realize! The young life here is seething with unrest." "That is what I am realizing." "But I found it like that." She shook her head. "You must go away, my dear." She was of the same mind, then, as her son had been. Go away! Go away! That was all the welcome they had here for Ethan Gano. A feeling of bitterness took hold on him, of such loneliness that it was as if, without warning, he had heard pronounced a sentence of perpetual exile. "For that's what it is," he thought: "she will never ask me to come again." And he was right--she never did. He had got up after a moment or two, and gone out to the veranda, where he walked up and down, with the noise of the rain in his ears. Presently Emmie looked out. "Where's Val?" asked Ethan. "Up-stairs. Ever since supper she's been seeing if the tubs and things are under all the leaks." "Ask her to come out here when she's finished, will you?" "Yes," said Emmie reluctantly, and turned away.