Taken altogether, it was a strange tale of the breeding of pluck, especially such pluck as had set Stephen’s name in newspapers without end, on Rolls of Honour and brasses, memorial crosses and shrines; even on the rough little wooden cross which the Germans had raised to him themselves. Only on rare occasions had Tibbie tried to tell her mother what Stephen had suffered in the past, and then it was always by request. It had been hard enough, even, for Stephen to tell his wife, and it was harder still for Tibbie to pass it on. Then, too, it seemed like sending him back to the house of bondage again, to keep even a hint of it in their thoughts. And it was all such a story of patches when it was told, a dreary and mean muddle like streaks on a sordid pane. They were such queer, quiet, sinister things that Emma had chosen to do—things that were yet as demoralising in their effect as any of Jemmy’s wild water-jug-throwing moods. What the other children had suffered only in imagination had really happened to Poor Stephen, for his mother had actually spied upon him while he slept. Night after night he had started awake to find her in the room, a motionless dark figure set at the foot of his bed. She had said nothing; she had done nothing; she had just stood in the shadow and smiled; and he, gasping with fear in the bed, had yet managed to keep silence, too. Quite early he had known her for his enemy, both by night and day, but in the shadow at the foot of the bed she was something worse. The whole sinister powers of darkness seemed to be concentrated in her form, coming to brood above him while he was sound in his first sleep.... This horrible travesty of motherly tenderness had frightened Tibbie Clapham as nothing else had frightened her in life, turning her, even in its recital, into a bitter, white-faced woman whom her mother hardly knew. Evil is never so sinister as when it touches the beautiful natural things and makes them strange. The story of those nights had impressed Tibbie with such cruel force that there was a time when she was almost afraid to approach her own children as they lay and slept.... The nights had been hardest to bear, so Stephen had said, but Emma had watched him everywhere else as well. Indeed, after a while, he had grown to feel that even distance could make no difference; that, no matter where he went, he would never be free of her eyes. The whole circumstances of his life, with their lack of comfort and food, contributed to the obsession, doing their share in keeping his nerves unnourished and his bodily strength low. Then, too, there was the miserable meanness which hid whatever he needed and watched his face while he sought it; that murmured alike whether he was at home or abroad; that crept upon him or made sudden noises; that hinted at evil in connection with every name that he knew, sliding back, in the final event, to hint at it also with his own....