however much he believed it to be her fault the
belief merely made him wretched; he had none of the pitiless black
pleasure to be got from telling himself it served her right. So
naturally kind was he--weak, soft, stupid, his mother shook out at
him--that through all his own shame at this naked vision of what had
been carefully dressed up for years in dignified clothes of wisdom and
affection, he was actually glad, when he had time in his room to think
it over, glad she should be so passionately positive that he, and only
he, was in the wrong. It would save her from humiliation; and of the
painful things of late Mr. Twist could least bear to see a human being
humiliated.

That was, however, towards morning. For hours raged, striding about his
room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a son had fallen,
trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to see clear about the
future. Clearer. Not clear. He couldn't hope for that yet. The future
seemed one confused lump. All he could see really clear of it was that
he was going, next day, and taking the twins. He would take them to the
other people they had a letter to, the people in California, and then
turn his face back to Europe, to the real thing, to the greatness of
life where death is. Not an hour longer than he could help would he or
they stay in that house. He had told his mother he would go away, and
she had said, "I hope never to see you again." Who would have thought
she had so much of passion in her? Who would have thought he had so much
of it in him?

Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist. Not so could
fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that basis of
suspicion, distrust, jealousy. Through his instinct, though not through
his brain, shot the conviction that his mother was jealous of the
twins,--jealous of the youth of the twins, and of their prettiness, and
goodness, and of the power, unknown to them, that these things gave
them. His brain was impervious to such a conviction, because it was an
innocent brain, and the idea would never have entered it that a woman of
his mother's age, well over sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his
instinct knew it.

The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was, "You
have killed me. You have killed your own mother. And just because of
those girls."

And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could find,
search as he might, nothing to b