"Go on, you great gaby; don't tell me you don't know what you can do with those eyes of yours." This annoyed him with its suggestion of a deliberate manipulation on his part of the springs of affection. "Oh, mother," he said, "you've been so different since my father came back, and I'm different, and everything seems to be changing so swiftly that it is hard to tell--hard to tell where we are. We seem so far away from the old life, just you and I together." Mrs. Fourmy looked at him and replied: "You remind me of the times when you were a little boy and used to sit with an ashen face, very thin, with the tears rolling down your cheeks. And when I asked you what was the matter you used to say: 'I'm heavy.' You weren't like an ordinary boy. You seemed to feel things." "I seem to feel things now," he said miserably; "but I don't know what things they are." Then, encouraged by the warm interest he felt in her, he added: "But I can't want not to feel." And, daring a stroke against the new baleful influence at work in the house, he told her of his recollection of the scene in the bedroom when she had spanked his father. "Well now," she said, "to think of your remembering that." "It made all the difference," said he, "all the difference in the world." "Oh, you poor mite," cried his mother; "and you couldn't see it was in fun?" "Fun!" He looked incredulous. "Yes. We were very happy then." He pounced eagerly on that. "Happy? Were you happy? And now? And now?" That was coming to closer quarters than she had courage for. She sank into indifference. "We're old now," she said, and he felt that she too had barred him out. She also may have felt it, for she shifted uncomfortably and led the talk away from herself and presently to praise of his father. "He was too clever," she said, "and I couldn't see how clever he was. I wanted him to beat his brothers in their own line, and I wanted him to love you two boys in my way instead of his. Of course I'm not clever, René, and I can't say where things got wrong. It's wonderful how he's settled down now. I never thought he would. And I want you to be nice to him, René, for my sake. Even if you're not going to be here much longer, I would like you to do that. He feels his position so." The sting of indignation pricked René into brutality. He had made his effort to reclaim his mother from his father, and failed. He cried: "What did he do?" "What do men do when dullness creeps over them and they are mortified with failure?" There was a note of vengeance in her tone, exasperation perhaps, a savage determination to set abominations before the fatuous innocence of her son. She succeeded. He was beset with horrors and a sick repulsion from his mother who could allow, accept, and seem to rejoice in such contamination. Drearily he said: "He's a dirty man," and upon that expression of opinion he left her.