"Ah! Passion!" "Yes," he said, purring, "I put it rather neatly, I think, the other day. The temperament of a clerk with a brain too good for that kind of work. He has a conscience." "But do you think he will do anything?" "He will do what he thinks right." "Then you do agree that he is a force? I feel that so strongly about him." Professor Smallman smiled in his charming, uninterested way. "Not much good being a force if you are an economist. That's specialist's work. Even business would be better." And Linda began to map out a career for René--business, the city council, Parliament, and thereafter--who knows? René was very docile. His friendship for Linda made life more gracious, more full, and he was shedding the awkwardness that had grown on him during his two years of solitude. He was able to go to Professor Smallman's whenever he liked, and other houses had been thrown open to him. At first he had endeavored to bring the new spirit that he had won into his life at home, but his father had become merely ribald, and in his mother the spark of feeling that had been struck out of her on his return from Scotland had died away and would not come again. What she felt and thought she concealed with chatter, and too many of her notes were now exasperatingly echoes of her husband's. For a short while René went through an agony of shame when he felt his parents as a drag on him, and he could never return home without an acute feeling of sadness. To counteract this he used to talk to Linda of his mother as she had been before his father's return, brave, humorous, quick to see and to understand. In such talk Linda delighted, and she made him promise to introduce her to his household. It was arranged. "Afternoon tea, I suppose," said Mrs. Fourmy. "Thin bread and butter in the parlor." "I think she'd like what we always have. She particularly said you weren't to make any fuss." "But I'd like to wear my black silk. I don't often, now." "You can wear what you like, mother. Only let us have tea as we always have it. I'm sure she'd like it better. Not sardines or tinned salmon or any of those things. They only have light tea because they have dinner afterward. It would be silly of us to pretend to be anything but what we are." "But they'll think----" "I don't care what they think." Mrs. Fourmy stole a quick glance at him and said: "No. You never do." Her tone roused him to a hope that the old mother had come again, and he turned to her, only to see the quick light die down in her eyes and into them come the querulous questioning expression that seemed to forbid him to pass beyond the empty words and looks she gave him. He realized then how false an idea he must have given to Linda, and he wished she were not coming. When the day arrived, just before he went to fetch Linda he sought out his mother, and found her dressing in her room with his father lying on his bed smoking and reading.