"That is a very charitable and kind way of putting it, mother. I have stayed because I am a fool--because I can't take the trouble to do anything but what suggests itself at the moment. Perhaps you think I don't know? Oh, I know very well, if that did any good. I am going to get the house ready, and you will join me when it is fit for you to live in." "I, Walter?" she said, with a startled tone. Her face flushed and then grew pale. She looked at him with a curious mixture of pleasure and pain. It seemed like opening up a question which had been long settled. Death is better than the reviving flutters of life when these are but to lead to a little more suffering and a dying over again. She added, somewhat tremulously, "I think perhaps it would be better not to consider the question of removal as affecting me." "Mother," he said, almost wildly, his eyes blazing upon her, "your reproaches are more than I can bear." "I mean no reproach," she said, quietly. "It is simple enough. Your life should not be fettered by cares which are unnecessary. I am very well here." "We can't go all over it again," he said. "We discussed that before. But you will say I have been as selfish, as careless as ever I was: and it is true--worse. Ah, I wonder if this was part of the penalty? Worse, in the old way. That would be a sort of a devilish punishment, just like him--if one were so silly as to believe that he had the power." "Of whom are you speaking, Walter?" asked his mother, startled. "Punishment--who can punish you? You have done nothing to put yourself in any one's power." He gazed at her for a moment as she looked at him with anxious eyes, investigating his face to discover, if she could, what he meant. Then he burst into an excited laugh. "I am getting melodramatic," he said, "by dint of being wretched, I suppose." "Walter, what is this? If there is indeed anything hanging over you, for God's sake tell me." She got up hurriedly and went to him in sudden trouble and alarm, but the sensation of the moment did not carry him any further. He put away her hand almost impatiently. "Oh, there is nothing to tell," he said, with irritation. "You take everything _au pied de la lettre_. But I am going to town to-morrow, all the same."