his mother's arm and helped her to get up. "You're very wise,
you two," he flung at the twins in the voice of the goaded, "but you may
take it from me you don't know everything yet. Mother, come into the
drawing-room, and we'll talk. Edith'll see to these girls. I expect I
ought to have talked sooner," he went on, as he led her to the door,
"but confound it all, I've only been home about a couple of hours."

"Five," said Mrs. Twist.

"Five then. What's five? No time at all."

"Ample," said Mrs Twist; adding icily, "and did I you say confound,
Edward?"

"Well, damn then," said Edward very loud, in a rush of rank rebellion.

CHAPTER XVII

This night was the turning-point in Mr. Twist's life. In it he broke
loose from his mother. He spent a terrible three hours with her in the
drawing-room, and the rest of the night he strode up and down his
bedroom. The autumn morning, creeping round the house in long white
wisps, found him staring out of his window very pale, his mouth pulled
together as tight as it would go.

His mother had failed him. She had not understood. And not only simply
not understood, but she had said things when at last she did speak,
after he had explained and pleaded for at least an hour, of an
incredible bitterness and injustice. She had seemed to hate him. If she
hadn't been his mother Mr. Twist would have been certain she hated him,
but he still believed that mothers couldn't hate their children. It was
stark against nature; and Mr. Twist still believed in the fundamental
rightness of that which is called nature. She had accused him of gross
things--she, his mother, who from her conversation since he could
remember was unaware, he had judged, of the very existence of such
things. Those helpless children ... Mr. Twist stamped as he strode.
Well, he had made her take that back; and indeed she had afterwards
admitted that she said it in her passion of grief and disappointment,
and that it was evident these girls were not like that.

But before they reached that stage, for the first time in his life he
had been saying straight out what he wanted to say to his mother just as
if she had been an ordinary human being. He told her all he knew of the
twins, asked her to take them in for the present and be good to them,
and explained the awkwardness of their position, apart from its tragedy,
as Germans by birth stranded in New England, where opinion at that
moment was so hostile to Germans. Then,