Leo shook himself free, laughing, and turned his canine lovers with an upset chair out of the room. Only his namesake was allowed to stay. He stretched himself at his feet with dignified composure, and drank in draughts of the long-lost master's scent, as one who enjoys an unsurpassed delicacy. Then his mother reappeared. She had taken off her nightcap and put on a morning gown. The grey hair had been hurriedly smoothed, and there was even a brooch showing under her chin. Like all mothers when their sons come back to them from distant countries, she asked him if he was hungry. No, he said; he was only tired. A pleasant sensation of slackness had taken possession of his limbs. Three hours' sleep, and then the work of managing the neglected estate should begin. But where was Johanna all this time--she who had first caught sight of him? Surely she could not have gone to bed without giving him a welcome? The question seemed to embarrass his mother. "She asked you to excuse her," she answered, "because she didn't feel quite prepared to meet you ... at least----" "Now, upon my word, little mother! How long is it since preparations have been necessary between Johanna and me?" For answer, his mother made a wry face, and, taking his hand in hers, stroked it gently. "There is something wrong here too," he thought, and resolved to investigate the matter thoroughly, early the next morning. But the mother, whose memory was short, began laughing again. "What a big beard you've grown!" she said admiringly; "and how close-cropped your hair is! And you are brown, oh, so brown; you look exactly as if you had come from the man[oe]uvres." And while she fondled him, her gaze rested on him in a shy scrutiny. There was an undertone of anxiety in her manner despite her proud tenderness. He had come home as a kind of prodigal son. His soul had fed on husks, and yet he had thrived on them withal. Between mother and son there was much that was difficult to speak of, and what was most difficult of all would have to remain unspoken. "I will go and see if your bed is ready," she said, rising, and combing the ends of his beard with her hand in passing. As she opened the door into the next room, which was in darkness, she started back with a cry, answered by a simultaneous, only more alarmed exclamation from the other side. At the same instant Leo saw a glimmer of something white, and then another, disappear into the darkness. Mamma turned to him, and said, with a titter, "It was the girls." The lovely double picture that he had seen on the terrace rose before his eyes. "Come in," he called out, and stood up as if he were going to the door. But his mother stopped him, laughing. "For goodness' sake, let them run away to bed," she said. "They were in their nightgowns." V