"She's a dancer, isn't she?" He had a vague and ashamed wish to see her feet and petticoats, and he thrust the photograph aside. Frowning, he walked to the door. He felt himself unclean, and he bathed his eyes in the coolness of mountain stream and wood. Then he looked at Theresa. She came like another breath of wind. Grace was a girl to him, but Theresa was a child, and her eager look would never have a sensuous appeal: it was of the open air, of water and of wind. Her lips were closed as on a sudden determination, her eyes were light and shining, she seemed to speak the tongue of all creatures in love with the war of life; but he thought of her at once as of a little leaf blown from a birch-tree, but a leaf that leapt in the wind because it chose to do so, and with a firm intention of being blown only where it wished to go. "I like her," he said aloud. "She isn't pretty." "No." He felt there was something indecent in prettiness. "Let's put Theresa on the mantelpiece." "Grace shall go in the parlour. She is an ornament." "I've got that scholarship," he said abruptly. "I heard at school. There'll be a letter here to-morrow." She stood silent for an instant, and he saw a deeper colour creep over her cheeks. "I knew you'd get it." She kissed him. "Bless you, my son! I knew you'd get it." "Oh, Mother!" "I did, or why did I buy all that flannel for your shirts? I've made three of them already. Your father's in the garden. Go and tell him." "You can." "No, you do it. Alexander, it'll mean a lot to him." "I don't believe it, unless getting rid of me's a lot." "You're hard, Alec. In all his life he's had no success but this of yours, and he'll be pleased. You don't know how much--how much he cares for you." "Oh, that----" he said, and paused in his walk to the door. "How will you do without me? Winter coming on, and--he gets worse." "He takes less," she said sharply. "He'll take longer dying," was his thought, but he said, "Sometimes. But he's more restless. He's not responsible. I believe he's possessed." Again he thought of Janet and of the dead witch. "Don't say such things! Possessed, indeed! He's not responsible; but why, poor soul? Because his father was a bad old man. He can't help himself. It's wicked the way a man's vice can come crawling after his son. Wicked! It turns me from my prayers sometimes." "There's a bad chance for me. You'll never have thought of that, perhaps." "I'm your mother as well as his wife, my lad; but you're strong, Alec. I've given you my strength. And he's weak. But for all that he's the one man in the world for me, so mind what you say of him! He's the one man. You'll know some day. Why, if I saw him doing murder, I'd just wipe the blood off his poor hands." She ended, and then, hearing the echo of her own words, she looked at him with an approach to shyness. "You think I'm mad." "No, I think you're wonderful. You're--you're grand," he stammered.