Only once in all his life has Little Yeogh Wough's love ever seemed to fail me, and that was at just about the time when his Public School career was coming to a close.

I had done a thing that I hardly ever do. I had defied one of my superstitions. And I had been punished for doing it.

My husband had asked me to let him paint my portrait. He had been asking me the same thing for years past, and I had always refused, remembering the injunction that: "Thou shalt not make to thyself the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth."

Of course I know there are sophistical people who make a point of mixing this commandment up with the sentence that follows it and pretending that it's only the bowing down and worshipping that are forbidden. But I know better. I have seen times without number the fate that has followed the person who, not being a royal personage or an actor or an actress, or a Lord Mayor, has indulged in the arrogant joy of having his portrait painted.

These exceptions that I have made are safe enough, because it is, as it were, a part of their business in life to have their portraits painted, as well as their photographs taken.

"It is really such an absurd idea of yours," my husband said to me. "It's all the purest nonsense. Of course a lot of people die directly they have had their portraits painted, but that's mainly because they're usually getting on for a hundred before they can afford to pay anybody to do them."

"There may certainly be something in that," I agreed. "And I will admit this much—that I don't think this superstition applies completely to people who don't believe in it. But unluckily I do believe in it. Still, your not being a professional artist may make a difference. If you'll promise to do the thing very badly, so that fate may not know it's meant for me, I'll let you do it."

I don't think there was any particular reason why fate should have known that the picture was meant for me. Indeed, one of our friends, a well-known novelist, cried out directly he caught sight of the first sketch and before he knew whom it was meant to be, that it was the best portrait he'd ever seen of his dear and lifelong companion the late Henry Irving. Anyhow, as the painting progressed, I did what was for me an extraordinary thing—I caught influenza. And, as the picture grew and grew, I got worse and worse, until I very nearly died of oedema of the lungs.

Little Yeogh Wough was written to and told all about it. His reply was a telegram to his father in the following words:

"Pray convey my deepest sympathy.—Roland."

"Pray convey my deepest sympathy.—Roland!"

He has never forgotten that telegram from that day to this. He has prayed to forget it, and has never been able to.

It did me more good than twenty doctors could have done. I sat up in bed and threw a dressing-gown round my shoulders and surveyed the blank faces of the other occupants of the room.

"Well, Miss Torry, I should like to know what you think of that?"

"What I think?" answered Miss Torry, shaking her head hopelessly. "What I think is—well, he must be mad."

"I'll tell you what I think," ventured Old Nurse, not looking at me but hurling her words like bombs at my secretary. "And that is that he've forgot for once to play his part and 'e's showing the selfishness that's all through and through him. When you come to think of all that his mother have done for 'im—and 'ow she've made a god of him and knelt down and worshipped 'im, as m'say, and put everything and everybody else to one side for 'im—well, if I was 'er I'd never take the trouble to turn my head to look at him again. No, that I wouldn't. I'm only glad as she can see him in 'is true light at last."

"That telegram is like a message from a Mayor and Corporation to condole with royalty on the death of a distant cousin," I said bitterly. "Miss Torry, will you go downstairs and tell them to get me a mutton chop and to send it up as soon as possible? I see it doesn't pay me to be ill. I'm going to get well, portrait or no portrait, and stand up against that boy."

"I don't really think he can know how very ill you've been," said Miss Torry gently. "If he does know, I'm ashamed of him for a heartless wretch. But, you must remember, he's not accustomed to your ever having anything the matter with you and he may think the news sent him was exaggerated. But, anyhow, I'm cancelling the order I was sending to the Stores for him. He shall have no cake, no biscuits and no meat tabloids—and I only hope he's got no pocket money to get them on the spot for himself."

After this, for the first time since he had been born, I fought against my great and too-forgiving love for him and tried to cast it down. And when he came home for the holidays and on the first evening said to me, as always:

"Come and see me in bed, mother."

I answered him very coldly:

"No."

There is no anger in the world like the anger of a great love that is hurt.

I saw a shadow come into his deep and very sad eyes.

"I shan't be able to sleep unless you come and see me in bed," he said, with something very like a break in his voice.

I did not speak. I felt as if I were choking. He slid one hand to a bowl of flowers, took a piece of pink hyacinth and held it out to me.

"Come—and wear that."

Still I did not answer. Then a knock came at the door and Old Nurse walked into the room.

"If you please, 'm, when I asked you if I might go out for two hours this afternoon, it was so as I might go and see the doctor. I 'aven't been feeling at all well lately. So I went and 'e kept me an hour in 'is insulting-room, making an examination. An' 'e says I must leave here and go into 'ospital and 'ave an operation."

The Boy and I looked at each other with laughter in our eyes, in spite of the gravity of her announcement. It was her phrase "insulting-room" that had done it.

He knew now that I should come and see him in bed. And his glad, rich voice rang out with a gladder, richer tone than ever as he called to his father from the other side of a locked door:

"Father, can I have a bath?"

"I don't think as you'll 'ave much chance of one this evening, Master Roland, unless you wants a cold one," broke in Old Nurse, speaking from the nursery. "Your father 'ave put his visiting-card on the 'ot-water tap and I can't venture to take a drop of the 'ot, not even for the children."

"It will be all right, Roland," I said, running upstairs and proceeding to smooth matters for him.

For a long while that evening I knelt by his bed without either of us saying a word. Then at last he spoke:

"It won't matter much what things go wrong with me in life if only I can always have you to say good night to me."

"You might easily never have had me to say good night to you again, Little Yeogh Wough. I very nearly died about a month ago. You didn't believe it, of course, because I am so strong. But it was very cruel of you to send that telegram."

"I didn't send it. Another boy sent it. That doesn't make things any better, I know, but it happened that something went wrong at the house just then and I couldn't leave, and yet I wanted to send the telegram at once, and so I asked a boy who was going into the town to send it. He said he could remember it and didn't want it written out, and then he forgot it and put words of his own. There, now you know how it was."

"Why didn't you tell me this before, Little Yeogh Wough? It would have saved me so much suffering. You see, when a selfish woman, such as I've always been, loves unselfishly, it isn't a joy but a pain—one long aching pain all the time——"

I broke off and he patted my cheek with one of his hands that were now so big and strong.

"This doesn't look very promising for my going into the Indian Civil Service," he said, half playfully. "Oh, by the way, a week before I came away from school a fellow who had been studying up palmistry looked at my hands and told me I'm going to die a violent death by a bullet or the explosion of a shell. So that looks like India, doesn't it?"

"Yes. It looks like sedition. If you gave your life like that for your country, it would be terrible, but I should be proud. Oh, if only I could one day see you another John Nicholson!"

"I believe you'd rather have me another Nicholson or Rhodes than another Shakespeare."

"Yes, I would. I don't know why. I don't understand it myself. But I believe that every woman, even the brainiest, carries a man of Action hidden away somewhere within her. I can't help feeling that it's a greater thing to have given your name to Rhodesia than to have written 'Hamlet.' But what I love in you is that you've got the book brain and the other brain, too. You've learnt all that the University fogies know without letting yourself become a fogy in doing it. Do you know, your classical master told somebody the other day that you were meteoric and that nobody could be compared with you? And he didn't know that the remark would ever be repeated to me."

"I don't like Latin and Greek a bit, really," he smiled. "I'm only good at them because I made up my mind that I would be. But I shouldn't like a life of mere bodily exercise only, like a soldier's. I don't know yet what I want. You know, Big Yeogh Wough, old proverbs are very silly. There's that one about a contented mind being a continual feast. It ought to be altered to 'A contented mind is a continual beast,' because nobody that's got one can ever do anything in the world, either for himself or anybody else. But, of course, the discontent must be good-tempered. I don't mean that silly people ought to say they won't sweep the roads because they're waiting to get up some day to the throne. But I think everybody ought to do a little striving after something higher."

After a few minutes I said:

"It will be a dreadful thing for me to have to say good-bye to you if you ever do go out to India, Little Yeogh Wough."

His arm stole round my neck. And as he held me like this I found myself saying over, half to him and half to myself, some lines that I had taught him long before from the 'Children's Song':

"Good night, boy of my heart!"

"Good night, Big Yeogh Wough."

At his room door I looked back to say lightly:

"Anyhow, even if there is any truth in your friend's prophecy, I daresay I shall be dead and buried before that bullet or that shell hits you in India."

"Oh, it's not to happen till I'm sixty! So, you see, whatever I may do, I shall be quite safe till then."