ach:

"I could never have believed you would say such a thing to me."

"I'm awfully sorry," he murmured. "It was inexcusable."

"Michael," she pleaded, coming to him sorrowfully, "won't you give up
this marriage?"

He was touched by her manner so gently despairing after his sneer.

"Mother, I must keep faith with myself."

"Only with yourself? Then she doesn't care for you? And you're not
thinking of _her?_"

"Of course she cares for me."

"But she'd get over it almost at once?"

"Perhaps," he admitted.

"Do you trust her? Do you believe she will be able to be a good woman?"

"That will be my look-out," he said impatiently. "If she fails, it will
be my fault. It's always the man's fault. Always."

"Very well," said his mother resignedly. "I can say no more, can I? You
must do as you like."

The sudden withdrawal of her opposition softened him as nothing else
would have done. He compared the sweetness of her resignation with his
own sneer of a minute ago. He felt anxious to do something that would
show his penitence.

"Mother, I hate to wound you. But I must be true to what I have worked
out for myself. I must marry Lily. Apart from a mad love I have for her,
there is a deeper cause, a reason that's bound up with my whole theory
of behavior, my whole attitude toward existence. I could not back out of
this marriage."

"Is all your chivalry to be devoted to the service of Lily?" she asked.

He felt grateful to her for the name. When his mother no longer called
her "this girl," half his resentment fled. The situation concerned the
happiness of human beings again; there were no longer prejudices or
abstractions of morality to obscure it.

"Not at all, mother. I would do anything for you."

"Except not marry her."

"That wouldn't be a sacrifice worth making," he argued. "Because if I
did that I should destroy myself to myself, and what was left of me
wouldn't be a complete Michael. It wouldn't be your son."

"Will you postpone your marriage, say for three months?"

He hesitated. How could he refuse her this?

"Not merely for your own sake," she urged; "but for all our sakes. We
shall all see things more clearly and pleasantly, perhaps, in three
months' time."

He was conquered by the implication of justice for Lily.

"I won't marry her for three months," he promised.

"And you know, darling boy, the dreadful thing is that I very nearly
missed the train owing to the idiocy of the head porter at