A long while it seemed ere she spoke, and once or twice I shot her a furtive comprehensive glance, and saw her as I shall ever see her to my dying day. Her eyes were upon me. I do not believe that she gave Falcone a single thought at first. It was at me only that she looked, and with such a sorrow in her glance to see me so vigorous and lusty, as surely could not have been fetched there by the sight of my corpse itself. Her lips moved awhile in silence; and whether she was at her everlasting prayers, or whether she was endeavouring to speak but could not for emotion, I do not know. At last her voice came, laden with a chill reproach. “Agostino!” she said, and waited as if for some answer from me. It was in that instant that rebellion stirred in me. Her coming had turned me cold, for all that my body was overheated from the exercise and I was sweating furiously. Now, at the sound of her voice, something of the injustice that oppressed me, something of the unreasoning bigotry that chained and fettered me, stood clear before my mental vision for the first time. It warmed me again with the warmth of sullen indignation. I returned her no answer beyond a curtly respectful invitation that she should speak her mind, couched--as had been her reproof--in a single word of address. “Madonna?” I challenged, and emulating something of old Falcone's attitude, I drew myself erect, flung back my head, and brought my eyes to the level of her own by an effort of will such as I had never yet exerted. It was, I think, the bravest thing I ever did. I felt, in doing it, as one feels who has nerved himself to enter fire. And when the thing was done, the ease of it surprised me. There followed no catastrophe such as I expected. Before my glance, grown suddenly so very bold, her own eyes drooped and fell away as was her habit. She spoke thereafter without looking at me, in that cold, emotionless voice that was peculiar to her always, the voice of one in whom the founts of all that is sweet and tolerant and tender in life are for ever frozen. “What are you doing with weapons, Agostino?” she asked me. “As you see, madam mother, I am at practice,” I answered, and out of the corner of my eye I caught the grim approving twitch of old Falcone's lips. “At practice?” she echoed, dully as one who does not understand. Then very slowly she shook her sorrowful head. “Men practise what they must one day perform, Agostino. To your books, then, and leave swords for bloody men, nor ever let me see you again with weapons in your hands if you respect me.” “Had you not come hither, madam mother, you had been spared the sight to-day,” I answered with some lingering spark of my rebellious fire still smouldering. “It was God's will that I should come to set a term to such vanities before they take too strong a hold upon you,” answered she. “Lay down those weapons.”