With a rush, almost as if she feared she would not do it if she hesitated, Glen flung herself into her speech. She remembered it perfectly, and did not miss a syllable of it. “Then, perhaps we shall save time, Mrs. Parker, if I tell you at once that your son’s pursuit of me has been wholly without encouragement. Indeed, I have let him see--so plainly that only a defective mentality or a deliberate insolence would fail to be convinced of it--that I feel for him only the greatest dislike and the deepest contempt, not only for what he is, but for the life he leads, and for everything about him.” Mrs. Eugenia Parker’s embarrassed color ebbed slowly out of her face, and left her almost alarmingly pale. She opened her severely plain handbag and took out a good-sized handkerchief initialed with a small block P and wiped her lips. Then, without a word, she rose from the Tenafee chair and stepped to the window, and stood looking out into the glow of the setting sun. (“She’s so surprised she doesn’t know what to say,” Glen thought. “Now she won’t have to beg or threaten or bribe, and it just takes her breath away.”) It was a surprise, and tumbled over all her preconceived ideas like ninepins, but a greater surprise was in store. Mrs. Parker faced about, and against the brightness of the window was merely a silhouette; it was impossible to see her features until she moved nearer. “I--I expected--I thought--even before seeing you--after talking with Miss Jennings, that you would say that--at least”--she turned now, and the light was on her instead of behind her, and the amazing, incredible fact was plain: the President of the Federated Clubs was weeping--“or at least--that you would _think_ that,” she finished with a little gulp. “I--I could not see how it could be otherwise. But I--_hoped_. The saying is that love is blind, Miss Darrow, but when you have lived as long as I have, you will know that that is not true; love, if it is worth anything, is Argus-eyed for faults in its object. I know, none better, what Peter’s faults are.” She blew her nose and swallowed twice. “I have seen them bud and blossom, and I have deplored them more than any words can tell you. But in spite of them--and they are not mean or cruel or low faults, Miss Darrow, I must say that in his defense--in spite of them, many people have found that he has endearing qualities. I--I have found it so myself, in spite of my constant disapproval of his idleness and his lack of guiding ambition. Have you--have you, by any chance, watched him in the presence of children and animals and old people? That is said to be a sign of _something_, isn’t it? I have never known him to do an unkind or ungenerous thing, unless, of course, in the sense that he has not awakened to any constructive activity. That would make his faults of omission, rather than commission,” she was warming to her theme, regaining a little of her platform poise. “Of course, I know that there