on asks questions. Mercy did not in the least know that she was
outgrowing Stephen White. She did not in the least suspect that her
affection and her loyalty were centring around an ideal personality, to
which she gave his name, but which had in reality never existed. She
believed honestly that she was living for and in Stephen all this time;
that she was his, as he was hers, inalienably and for ever. If it had been
suggested to her that it was unnatural that she should be so content in a
daily life which he did not share, so busy and glad in occupations and
plans and aspirations into which he did not enter, she would have been
astonished. She would have said, "How foolish of me to do otherwise! We
have our lives to lead, our work to do. It would be a sin to waste one's
life, to leave one's work undone, because of the mere lack of seeing any
one human being, however dear." Stephen knew love better than this: he
knew that life without the daily sight of Mercy was a blank drudgery;
that, day by day, month by month, he was growing duller and duller, and
more and more lifeless, as if his very blood were being impoverished by
lack of nourishment. Surely it was a hard fate which inflicted on this
man, already so overburdened, the perpetual pain of a love denied,
thwarted, unhappy. Surely it was a brave thing in him to bear the double
load uncomplainingly, to make no effort to throw it off, and never by a
word or a look to visit his own sufferings on the head of the helpless
creature, who seemed to be the cause of them all. If there were any change
in his manner toward his mother during these months, it was that he grew
tenderer and more demonstrative to her. There were even times when he
kissed her, solely from the yearning need he felt to kiss something human,
he so longed for one touch of Mercy's hand. He would sometimes ask her
wistfully, "Do I make you happy, mother?" And she would be won upon and
softened by the words; when in reality they were only the outcry of the
famished heart which needed some reassurance that its sacrifices had not
been all in vain.

Month after month went on, and no tenants came for the "wing." Stephen
even humiliated himself so far as to offer it to Jane Barker's husband at
a lowered rent; but his offer was surlily rejected, and he repented having
made it. Very bitterly he meditated on the strange isolation into which he
and his mother were forced. His sympathies were not broad and general
enough