Even John Ralston’s tough constitution could not have been expected to shake off in a few hours the fatigue and soreness of such an experience as he had undergone. Even if he had been perfectly well, he would have stayed at home that day in the expectation of receiving an answer from Katharine; and as it was, he needed as much rest as he could get. He had not often been at the trouble of taking care of himself, and the sensation was not altogether disagreeable, as he sat by his own fireside, in the small room which went by the name of ‘Mr. Ralston’s study.’ He stretched out his feet to the fire, drank a little tea from time to time, stared at the logs, smoked, turned over the pages of a magazine without reading half a dozen sentences, and revolved the possibilities of his life without coming to any conclusion.

He was stiff and bruised. When he moved his head, it ached, and when he tried to lean to the right, his neck hurt him on the left side. But if he did not move at all, he felt no pain. There was a sort of perpetual drowsy hum in his ears, partly attributable, he thought, to the singing of a damp log in the fire, and partly to his own imagination. When he tried to think of anything but his own rather complicated affairs, he almost fell asleep. But when his attention was fixed on his present situation, it seemed to him that his life had all at once come to a standstill just as events had been moving most quickly. As for really sleeping in the intervals of thought, his constant anxiety for Katharine’s reply to his letter kept his faculties awake. He knew, however, that it would be quite unreasonable to expect anything from her before twelve o’clock. He tried to be patient.

Between ten and eleven, when he had been sitting before his fire for about an hour, the door opened softly and Mrs. Ralston entered the room. She did not speak, but as John rose to meet her she smiled quietly and made him sit down again. Then she kneeled before the hearth and began to arrange the fire, an operation which she had always liked, and in which she displayed a singular talent. Moreover, at more than one critical moment in her life, she had found it a very good resource in embarrassment. A woman on her knees, making up a fire, has a distinct advantage. She may take as long as she pleases about it, for any amount of worrying about the position of a particular log is admissible. She may change colour twenty times in a minute, and the heat of the flame as well as the effort she makes in moving the wood will account satisfactorily for her blushes or her pallor. She may interrupt herself in speaking, and make effective pauses, which will be attributed to the concentration of her thoughts upon the occupation of her hands. If a man comes too near, she may tell him sharply to keep away, either saying that she can manage what she is doing far better if he leaves her alone, or alleging that the proximity of a second person will keep the air from the chimney and make it smoke. Or if the gods be favourable and she willing, she may at any moment make him kneel beside her and help her to lift a particularly heavy log. And when two young people are kneeling side by side before a pile of roaring logs in winter, the flames have a strange bright magic of their own; and sometimes love that has smouldered long blazes up suddenly and takes the two hearts with it—out of sheer sympathy for the burning oak and hickory and pine.

But Mrs. Ralston really enjoyed making up a fire, and she went to the hearth quite naturally and without reflecting that after what had occurred she felt a little timid in her son’s presence. He obeyed her and resumed his seat, and sat leaning forward, his arms resting on his knees and his hands hanging down idly, while he watched his mother’s skilful hands at work.

“Jack dear—” she paused in her occupation, having the tongs in one hand and a little piece of kindling-wood in the other, but did not turn round—“Jack, I can’t make up to you for what I did last night, can I?”

She was motionless for a moment, listening for his reply. It came quietly enough after a second or two.

“No, mother, you can’t. But I don’t want to remember it, any more than you do.”

Mrs. Ralston did not move for an instant after he had spoken. Then she occupied herself with the fire again.

“You’re quite right,” she said presently. “You wouldn’t be my son, if you said anything else. If I were a man, one of us would be dead by this time.”

She spoke rather intensely, so to say, but she used her hands as gently as ever in what she was doing. John said nothing.

“Men don’t forgive that sort of thing from men,” she continued presently. “There’s no reason why a woman should be forgiven, I suppose, even if the man she has insulted is her own son.”

“No,” John answered thoughtfully. “There is no more reason for forgiving it. But there’s every reason to forget it, if you can.”

“If you can. I don’t wish to forget it.”

“You should, mother. Of course, you brought me up to believe—you and my father—that to doubt a man’s word is an unpardonable offence, because lying is a part of being afraid, which is the only unpardonable sin. I believe it. I can’t help it.”

“I don’t expect you to. We’ve always—in a way—been more like two men, you and I, than like a mother and her son. I don’t want the allowances that are made for women. I despise them. I’ve done you wrong, and I’ll take the consequences. What are they? It’s a bad business, Jack. I’ve run against a rock. I’ll do anything you ask. I’ll give you half my income, and we can live apart. Will you do that?”

“Mother!” John Ralston fairly started in his surprise. “Don’t talk like that!”

“There!” exclaimed Mrs. Ralston, hanging up the hearthbrush on her left, after sweeping the feathery ashes from the shining tiles within the fender. “It will burn now. Nobody understands making a fire as I do.”

She rose to her feet swiftly, drew back from John, and sat down in the other of the two easy chairs which stood before the fireplace. She glanced at John and then looked at the fire she had made, clasping her hands over one knee.

“Smoke, won’t you?” she said presently. “It seems more natural.”

“All right—if you like.”

John lit a cigarette and blew two or three puffs into the air, high above his head, very thoughtfully.

“I’m waiting for your answer, Jack,” said Mrs. Ralston, at last.

“I don’t see what I’m to say,” replied John. “Why do you talk about it?”

“For this reason—or for these reasons,” said Mrs. Ralston, promptly, as though she had prepared a speech beforehand, which was, in a measure, the truth. “I’ve done you a mortal injury, Jack. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s not. I’ll tell you why. If any one else, man or woman, had deliberately doubted your statement on your word of honour, you would never have spoken to him or her again. Of course, in our country, duelling isn’t fashionable—but if it had been a man—I don’t know, but I think you would have done something to him with your hands. Yes, you can’t deny it. Well, the case isn’t any better because satisfaction is impossible, is it? I’m trying to look at it logically, because I know what you must feel. Don’t you see, dear?”

“Yes. But—”

“No! Let me say all I’ve got to say first, and then you can answer me. I’ve been thinking about it all night, and I know just what I ought to do. I know very well, too, that most women would just make you forgive as much as you could and then pretend to you and to themselves that nothing had ever happened. But we’re not like that, you and I. We’re like two men, and since we’ve begun in that way, it’s not possible to turn round and be different now, in the face of a difficulty. There are people who would think me foolish, and call me quixotic, and say, ‘But it’s your own son—what a fuss you’re making about nothing.’ Wouldn’t they? I know they would. It seems to me that, if anything, it’s much worse to insult one’s own son, as I did you, than somebody else’s son, to whom one owes nothing. I’m not going to put on sackcloth and sit in the ashes and cry. That wouldn’t help me a bit, nor you either. Besides, other people, as a rule, couldn’t understand the thing. You never told me a lie in your life. Last Monday when you came home after that accident, and weren’t quite yourself, you told me the exact truth about everything that had happened. You never even tried to deceive me. Of course you have your life, and I have mine. I have always respected your secrets, haven’t I, Jack?”

“Indeed you have, mother.”

“I know I have, and if I take credit for it, that only makes all this worse. I’ve never asked you questions which I thought you wouldn’t care to answer. I’ve never been inquisitive about all this affair with Katharine. I don’t even know at the present moment whether you’re engaged to her still, or not. I don’t want to know—but I hope you’ll marry her some day, for I’m very fond of her. No—I’ve never interfered with your liberty, and I’ve never been willing to listen to what people wished to tell me about you. I shouldn’t think it honest. And in that way we’ve lived very harmoniously, haven’t we?”

“Mother, you know we have,” answered John, earnestly.

“All that makes this very much worse. One drop of blood will turn a whole bowl of clean water red. It wouldn’t show at all if the water were muddy. If you and I lived together all our lives, we should never forget last night.”

“We could try to,” said John. “I’m willing.”

Mrs. Ralston paused and looked at him a full minute in silence. Then she put out her hand and touched his arm.

“Thank you, Jack,” she said gravely.

John tried to press her hand, but she withdrew it.

“But I’m not willing,” she resumed, after another short pause. “I’ve told you—I don’t want a woman’s privilege to act like a brute and be treated like a spoiled child afterwards. Besides, there are many other things. If what I thought had been true, I should never have allowed myself to act as I did. I ought to have been kind to you, even if you had been perfectly helpless. I know you’re wild, and drink too much sometimes. You have the strength to stop it if you choose, and you’ve been trying to since Monday. You’ve said nothing, and I’ve not watched you, but I’ve been conscious of it. But it’s not your fault if you have the tendency to it. Your father drank very hard sometimes, but he had a different constitution. It shortened his life, but it never seemed to affect him outwardly. I’m conscious—to my shame—that I didn’t discourage him, and that when I was young and foolish I was proud of him because he could take more than all the other officers and never show it. Men drank more in those days. It was not so long after the war. But you’re a nervous man, and your father wasn’t, and you have his taste for it without that sort of quiet, phlegmatic, strong, sailor’s nature that he had. So it’s not your fault. Perhaps I should have frightened you about it when you were a boy. I don’t know. I’ve made mistakes in my life.”

“Not many, mother dear.”

“Well—I’ve made a great one now, at all events. I’m not going back over anything I’ve said already. It’s the future I’m thinking of. I can’t do much, but I can manage a ‘modus vivendi’ for us—”

“But why—”

“Don’t interrupt me, dear! I’ve made up my mind what to do. All I want of you now, is your advice as a man, about the way of doing it. Listen to me, Jack. After what has happened between us—no matter how it turns out afterwards, for we can’t foresee that—it’s impossible that we should go on living as we’ve lived since your father died. I don’t mean that we must part, unless you want to leave me, as you would have a perfect right to do.”

“Mother!”

“Jack—if I were your brother, instead of your mother—still more, if I were any other relation—would you be willing to depend for the rest of your life on him, or on any one who had treated you as I treated you last night?”

She paused for an answer, but John Ralston was silent. With his character, he knew that she was quite right, and that nothing in the world could have induced him to accept such a situation.

“Answer me, please, dear,” she said, and waited again.

“Mother—you know! Why should I say it?”

“You would refuse to be dependent any longer on such a person?”

“Well—yes—since you insist upon my saying it,” answered John, reluctantly. “But with you, it’s—”

“With me, it’s just the same—more so. I have had a longer experience of you than any one else could have had, and you’ve never deceived me. Consequently, it was more unpardonable to doubt you. I don’t wish you to be dependent on me any longer, Jack. It’s an undignified position for you, after this.”

“Mother—I’ve tried—”

“Hush, dear! I’m not talking about that. If there had been any necessity, if you had ever had reason to suppose that it wasn’t my greatest happiness to have you with me—or that there wasn’t quite enough for us both—you’d have just gone to sea before the mast, or done something of the same kind, as all brave boys do who feel that they’re a burden on their mothers. But there’s always been enough for us both, and there is now. I mean to give you your share, and keep what I need myself. That will be yours some day, too, when I’m dead and gone.”

“Please don’t speak of that,” said John, quickly and earnestly. “And as for this idea of your—”

“Oh, I’m in no danger of dying young,” interrupted Mrs. Ralston, with a little dry laugh. “I’m very strong. All the Lauderdales are, you know—we live forever. My father would have been seventy-one this year if he hadn’t been killed. And as long as I live, of course, I must have something to live on. I don’t mean to go begging to uncle Robert for myself, and I shouldn’t care to do it for you, though I would if it were necessary. Now, we’ve got just twelve thousand dollars a year between us, and the house, which is mine, you know. That will give us each six thousand dollars a year. I shall see my lawyer this morning and it can be settled at once. Whenever the house is let, if we’re both abroad, you shall have half of the rent. When we’re both here, half of it is yours to live in—or pull down, if you like. If you marry, you can bring your wife here, and I’ll go away. Now, I think that’s fair. If it isn’t, say so before it’s too late.”

“I won’t listen to anything of the kind,” answered John, calmly.

“You must,” answered his mother.

“I don’t think so, mother.”

“I do. You can’t prevent me from making over half the estate to you, if I choose, and when that’s done, it’s yours. If you don’t like to draw the rents, you needn’t. The money will accumulate, for I won’t touch it. You shall not be in this position of dependence on me—and at your age—after what has happened.”

“It seems to me, mother dear, that it’s very much the same, whether you give me a part of your income, or whether you make over to me the capital it represents. It’s the same transaction in another shape, that’s all.”

“No, it’s not, Jack! I’ve thought of that, because I knew you’d say it. It’s so like you. It’s not at all the same. You might as well say that it was originally intended that you should never have the money at all, even after I died. It was and is mine, for me and my children. As I have only one child, it’s yours and mine jointly. As long as you were a boy, it was my business to look after your share of it for you. As soon as you were a man, I should have given you your share of it. It would have been much better, though there was no provision in either of the wills. If it had been a fortune, I should have done it anyhow, but as it was only enough for us two to live on, I kept it together and was as careful of it as I could be.”

“Mother—I don’t want you to do this,” said John. “I don’t like this sordid financial way of looking at it—I tell you so quite frankly.”

Mrs. Ralston was silent for a few moments, and seemed to be thinking the matter over.

“I don’t like it either, Jack,” she said at last. “It isn’t like us. So I won’t say anything more about it. I’ll just go and do it, and then it will be off my mind.”

“Please don’t!” cried Ralston, bending forward, for she made as though she would rise from her seat.

“I must,” she answered. “It’s the only possible basis of any future existence for us. You shall live with me from choice, if you like. It will—well, never mind—my happiness is not the question! But you shall not live with me as a matter of necessity in a position of dependence. The money is just as much yours as it’s mine. You shall have your share, and—”

“I’d rather go to sea—as you said,” interrupted John.

“And let your income accumulate. Very well. But I—I hope you won’t, dear. It would be lonely. It wouldn’t make any difference so far as this is concerned. I should do it, whatever you did. As long as you like, live here, and pay your half of the expenses. I shall get on very well on my share if I’m all alone. Now I’m going, because there’s nothing more to be said.”

Mrs. Ralston rose this time. John got up and stood beside her, and they both looked at the fire thoughtfully.

“Mother—please—I entreat you not to do this thing!” said John, suddenly. “I’m a brute even to have thought twice of that silly affair last night—and to have said what I said just now, that I couldn’t exactly feel as though anything could undo what had been done. Indeed—if there’s anything to forgive, it’s forgiven with all my heart, and we’ll forget it and live just as we always have. We can, if we choose. How could you help it—the way I looked! I saw myself in the glass. Upon my word, if I’d drunk ever so little, I should have been quite ready to believe that I was tipsy, from my own appearance—it was natural, I’m sure, and—”

“Hush, Jack!” exclaimed Mrs. Ralston. “I don’t want you to find excuses for me. I was blind with anger, if that’s an excuse—but it’s not. And most of all—I don’t want you to imagine for one moment that I’m going to make this settlement of our affairs with the least idea that it is a reparation to you, or anything at all of that sort. Not that you’d ever misunderstand me to that extent. Would you?”

“No. Certainly not. You’re too much like me.”

“Yes. There’s no reparation about it, because that’s more possible. As it is, no particular result will follow unless you wish it. You’ll be free to go away, if you please, that’s all. And if you choose to marry Katharine, and if she is willing to marry you on six thousand a year, you’ll feel that you can, though it’s not much. And for the matter of that, Jack dear—you know, don’t you? If it would make you happy, and if she would—I don’t think I should be any worse than most mothers-in-law—and all I have is yours, Jack, besides your share. But those are your secrets—no, it’s quite natural.”

John had taken her hand gently and kissed it. “I don’t want any gratitude for that,” she continued. “It’s perfectly natural. Besides, there’s no question of gratitude between you and me. It’s always been share and share alike—of everything that was good. Now I’m going. You’ll be in for luncheon? Do take care of yourself to-day. See what weather we’re having! And—well—it’s not for me to lecture you about your health, dear. But what Doctor Routh said is true. You’ve grown thinner again, Jack—you grow thinner every year, though you are so strong.”

“Don’t worry about me, mother dear. I’m all right. And I shan’t go out to-day. But I have a dinner-party this evening, and I shall go to it. I think I told you—the Van De Waters’—didn’t I? Yes. I shall go to that and show myself. I’m sure people have been talking about me, and it was probably in the papers this morning. Wasn’t it?”

“Dear—to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t look to see. It wasn’t very brave of me—but—you understand.”

“I certainly shan’t look for the report of my encounter with the prize-fighter. I’m sure he was one. I shall probably be stared at to-night, and some of them will be rather cold. But I’ll face it out—since I’m in the right for once.”

“Yes. I wouldn’t have you stay at home. People would say you were afraid and were waiting for it to blow over. Is it a big dinner?”

“I don’t know. I got the invitation a week ago, at least, so it isn’t an informal affair. It’s probably to announce Ruth Van De Water’s engagement to that foreigner—you know—I’ve forgotten his name. I know Bright’s going—because they said he wanted to marry her last year—it isn’t true. And there’ll probably be some of the Thirlwalls, and the young Trehearns, and Vanbrugh and his wife—you know, all the Van De Water young set. Katharine’s going, too. She told me when she got the invitation, some time last week. There’ll be sixteen or eighteen at table, and I suppose they’ll amuse themselves somehow or other afterwards. Nobody wants to dance to-night, I fancy—at least none of our set, after the Thirlwalls’, and the Assembly, and I don’t know how many others last week.”

“They’ll probably put you next to Katharine,” said Mrs. Ralston.

“Probably—especially there, for they always do—with Frank Miner on her other side to relieve my gloom. Second cousins don’t count as relations at a dinner-party, and can be put together. Half of the others are own cousins, too.”

“Well, if it’s a big dinner it won’t be so disagreeable for you. But if you’d take my advice, Jack—however—” She stopped.

“What is it, mother?” he asked. “Say it.”

“Well—I was going to say that if any one made any disagreeable remarks, or asked you why you weren’t at the Assembly last night, I should just tell the whole story as it happened. And you can end by saying that I was anxious about you and sent for Doctor Routh, and refer them to him. That ought to silence everybody.”

“Yes.” John paused a moment. “Yes,” he repeated. “I think you’re right. I wish old Routh were going to be there himself.”

“He’d go in a minute if he were asked,” said Mrs. Ralston.

“Would he? With all those young people?”

“Of course he would—only too delighted! Dear old man, it’s just the sort of thing he’d like. But I’m going, Jack, or I shall stay here chattering with you all the morning.”

“That other thing, mother—about the money—don’t do it!” Jack held her a moment by the hand.

“Don’t try to hinder me, dear,” she answered. “It’s the only thing I can do—to please my own conscience a little. Good-bye. I’ll see you at luncheon.”

She left the room quickly, and John found himself alone with his own thoughts again.

“It’s just like her,” he said to himself, as he lighted a cigar and sat down to think over the situation. “She’s just like a man about those things.”He had perhaps never admired and loved his mother as he did then; not for what she was going to do, but for the spirit in which she was doing it. He was honest in trying to hinder her, because he vaguely feared that the step might cause her some inconvenience hereafter—he did not exactly know how, and he was firmly resolved that he would not under any circumstances take advantage of the arrangement to change his mode of life. Everything was to go on just as before. As a matter of theory, he was to have a fixed, settled income of his own; but as a matter of fact, he would not regard it as his. What he liked about it, and what really appealed to him in it all, was his mother’s man-like respect for his honour, and her frank admission that nothing she could do could possibly wipe out the slight she had put upon him. Then, too, the fact and the theory were at variance and in direct opposition to one another. As a matter of theory, nothing could ever give him back the sensation he had always felt since he had been a boy—that his mother would believe him on his word in the face of any evidence whatsoever which there might be against him. But as a matter of fact, the evil was not only completely undone, but there was a stronger bond between them than there had ever been before.

That certainly was the first good thing which had come to him during the last four and twenty hours, and it had an effect upon his spirits.

He thought over what his mother had said about the evening, too, and was convinced that she was right in advising him to tell the story frankly as it had happened. But he was conscious all the time that his anxiety about Katharine’s silence was increasing. He had roused himself at dawn, in spite of his fatigue, and had sent a servant out to post the letter with the special delivery stamp on it. Katharine must have received it long ago, and her answer might have been in his hands before now. Nevertheless, he told himself that he should not be impatient, that she had doubtless slept late after the ball, and that she would send him an answer as soon as she could. By no process of reasoning or exaggeration of doubting could he have reached the conclusion that she had never received his letter. She had always got everything he sent her, and there had never been any difficulty about their correspondence in all the years during which they had exchanged little notes. He took up the magazine again, and turned over the pages idly. Suddenly Frank Miner’s name caught his eye. The little man had really got a story into one of the great magazines, a genuine novel, it seemed, for this was only a part, and there were the little words at the end of it, in italics and in parenthesis, ‘to be continued,’ which promised at least two more numbers, for as John reflected, when the succeeding number was to be the last, the words were ‘to be concluded.’ He was glad, for Miner’s sake, of this first sign of something like success, and began to read the story with interest.

It began well, in a dashing, amusing style, as fresh as Miner’s conversation, but with more in it, and John was beginning to congratulate himself upon having found something to distract his attention from his bodily ills and his mental embarrassments, when the door opened, and Miner himself appeared.

“May I come in, Ralston?” he enquired, speaking softly, as though he believed that his friend had a headache.

“Oh—hello, Frank! Is that you? Come in! I’m reading your novel. I’d just found it.”

Little Frank Miner beamed with pleasure as he saw that the magazine was really open at his own story, for he recognized that this, at least, could not be a case of premeditated appreciation.

“Why—Jack—” he stammered a moment later, in evident surprise. “You don’t look badly at all!”

“Did they say I was dead?” enquired Ralston, with a grim smile. “Take a cigar. Sit down. Tell me all about my funeral.”

Miner laughed as he carefully cut off the end of the cigar and lit it—a sort of continuous little gurgling laugh, like the purling of a brook.

“My dear boy,” he said, blowing out a quantity of smoke, and curling himself up in the easy chair, “you’re the special edition of the day. The papers are full of you—they’re selling like hot cakes everywhere—your fight with Tom Shelton, the champion light weight—and your turning up in the arms of two policemen—talk of a ‘jag!’ Lord!”