"Mother, I'm in love." "Well, I never! You're not going to be married now?" "No. It's hopeless. She's rich. At least her father is." "So that's why you look so queerly at Elsie. You can't expect them to be all alike." "It isn't only that. Only I can't get away from certain things." "What things?" "The horrible things people do." "You'll be kept busy if you worry about that." "It's about myself." "Want to confess? Go on." "I mean, George and I used to talk--you know. Well, it got beyond talk. Uncle Alfred gave me ten shillings once. I spent it--that way." "Well, well." "You can't dismiss it like that. I shouldn't be remembering it if it were so easy as that. I met her--you know--in Derby Street----" "You're not going to tell me the whole story?" "I must tell someone. I met her and she took me down a lot of streets. She walked along briskly in a business-like way, and I slunk along behind with my coat collar turned up and my cap over my eyes, and I kept shivering, though it wasn't cold. We came to a little house and she knocked at the door, and a fat woman with red arms came to it. She just looked at us and said: 'Full up.' We went on to another little house, but I couldn't get that out of my mind, and the room there was so horrible that I ran away, and that's all." Mrs. Fourmy looked up at the clock, into the fire, round at the corner cupboard. At last she said: "Well, you are a funny boy." "I'm in love all right," he said; "but I fed as if I'd never like to marry and just go on with you forever and ever. I could find a sort of happiness in just making enough for us to live on." His mother came over to him and laid her hands on his shoulders: "Don't make trouble for yourself, my dear. Don't do that. Let things alone. Trouble comes fast enough, and all your plans and thoughts and hopes aren't enough to deal with them. That's your father all over. Always wanting a little better than he got, and always getting a little worse than he deserved. Suppose we go out together once a week. That'll stop us getting into the way of sitting too much alone. And if the girl's the right sort of girl she won't let being rich and all that stand in her way." René patted her hand. "It's awfully good of you to listen," he said; "I feel better already. Only George----" "Don't let George worry you. He can do things you can't. George can keep his mind out of things like that." He felt immensely relieved. His confession seemed to have filled the vacancy left by George. Between himself and his mother there was established a more living relationship. There had been some authority in her comfortable words which had led him back to the old unconsidered position in which she was the central warmth of the home in which he lived. For a time at least he could be at rest and accept that things were so because they were so and not otherwise.