The balance came round again as she spoke, and John remembered how, in this very room, the same story had been told to him from the other side, and he had himself cried out, indignantly, ‘Could you not find them? Was there no clue?’ He said now, breathlessly, ‘Did you think that right?’ ‘Right!’ She paused with a little gasp, as if she had been stopped suddenly in her progress by an unexpected touch. ‘Could there be any question on the subject?’ ‘Did Susie think it right?’ ‘Susie!’ She paused again with impatience. ‘Susie is one of those women who are all-forgiving, and who have no judgment of right and wrong.’ ‘And you never hesitated, mother!’ ‘Never,’ she said, a faint colour like the reflection of a flame passing over her pale face. ‘Why should I hesitate? Could there be a question? Alas! Fate has done it instead of me: but could I--I, your mother, bring such a wrong upon you of my own free will? Don’t you think I would rather have died--to use that foolish phrase again--I use it to mean the extremity of wish and effort,--rather than have exposed you to know, much less to encounter--? Don’t let us speak of it,’ she said, giving her head a slight nervous shake, as if to shake the thought far from her. ‘Upon that subject I never had a doubt.’ ‘And yet he was a man, like other men: and his children at least were not his judges. Most men who have children have something, somebody to meet them after years of separation.’ ‘Did he say that?’ ‘He did not blame anybody. Knowing nothing about it but that he was a wretched poor criminal, and that this was his story, I, who was one of the offenders without knowing, was very indignant.’ ‘You were very indignant!’ ‘Yes, mother; I thought it cruel. My heart ached for the man; fourteen years of privation and loneliness, and not a soul to say “Welcome” when he came back into the cold world.’ ‘He had money, which buys friends--the kind of friends he liked.’ She had changed her attitude, and sat straight up, her eyes shining, the lines of her face all moving, rising up enraged and splendid in her own defence. ‘It seemed to have gone to his heart--the abandonment--and it went to mine, merely to hear the story told.’ ‘I bow,’ she said, ‘to the tenderness of both your hearts! I always felt there was a certain likeness. I act on other laws:--to bring a convict back into my family, to shame my young, high-minded, honourable son, whose path in life promised no difficulty; to shame my gentle child who has all a woman’s devotion to whoever suffers or seems to suffer; I don’t speak of myself. For myself, I would die a hundred times (that phrase again!) rather than be exposed---- No, no, no--nothing, nothing would have induced me to act otherwise. You don’t know what it is--you don’t know what _he_ is. Fate, I will not say God, has baffled my plans: but do not let him come near me, for I cannot bear it. I will rather leave everything and go away--to the end of the world.’