A wedge of silence drove between them. The character of the mother's stern virtue dawned upon Rhoda, appalling her: for the salvation of her son's soul she might bid him accept the full penalty of his crime--even that. A horror of such monstrous righteousness took the girl. She stole to unbolt the door and away to warn Christian, when a whisper stayed her. 'I failed him. I thought then only of my man, and I had no prayers for my boy. Ah, Christian, Christian!' Doubt had entered. Lois knelt and prayed. Rhoda wavered. Her estimate or the world's, the partial or the vindictive, shrank to their due proportions, as Lois thus set Christian's crime before the eye of Heaven. She wavered, turned, and fell kneeling, clinging and weeping, convicted of the vain presumption that would keep Christian from the hands of his God. She was bidden away when Lois caught a sound of Christian. His mother held him by the window for the first word. 'Christian, where is Philip?' His startled eyes were a stab to her soul; the tide that crimsoned his very brow checked hers at her heart. He failed of answering, and guilt weighed down his head. She rallied on an inspiration that greatest crimes blanch, never redden, and 'You have not killed him?' was a question of little doubt. 'No, thank God! no!' he said, and she saw that he shook. Then he tried to out with the whole worst truth, but he needed to labour for breath before he could say with a catch: 'I meant to--for one moment.' To see a dear face stricken so! Do the damned fare worse? More dreadful than any reproach was her turning away with wrung hands. She returned to question. 'Then where is he?' 'I cannot tell. He left me. He would not--he was afraid.' 'What had you done? You had harmed him?' 'Yes,' he said, and told how. 'What had he done to anger you? Had he struck first?' 'No.' 'You had quarrelled?' 'No.' 'Had you no excuse?' she said. He hesitated. Could she know and understand all, there might be some pity with her condemnation, there would be some tempering of her distress. 'I can make none,' he had to answer. When next she spoke: 'Then it was old hate,' she said, and after a minute he answered 'Yes' to that. So she had to realise that for months, according to her gospel, he had been a murderer at heart; and her assurance of a merciful blank of mind and memory tottered, threatening a downfall that would prove the dear son of her hope of a rotten build. She tested his memory. 'I asked a promise of you once, and you gave it.' 'Yes,' he said, and, do what he would, 'I have broken it' got mangled wretchedly in his throat. 'Your promise! Is it believable? You could--you!' 'O mother! If God forgot me!' Her heart smote her because her prayers had deserted him then. 'Oh, peace!' she said, 'and do not add blasphemy, nor seek to juggle with God.'