riage. Pete had been brought up by his
mother, but he had very little remembrance of any process of molding. It
seemed to him as if they had lived in a sort of partnership since he had
been able to walk and talk. It had been as natural for him to spend his
hours after school in stamping and sealing her large correspondence as it
had been for her to pinch and arrange for years so as to send him to the
university from which his father had been graduated. She would have been
glad, he knew, if he had decided to follow his father in the study of
medicine, but he recoiled from so long a period of dependence; he liked
to think that he brought to his financial reports something of a
scientific inheritance.

She had, he thought, every virtue that a mother could have, and she
combined them with a gaiety of spirit that made her take her virtues as
if they were the most delightful amusements. It was of this gaiety that
he had first thought until Mathilde had pointed out to him that there was
tragedy in the situation. "What will your mother do without you?" the
girl kept saying. There was indeed nothing in his mother's life that
could fill the vacancy he would leave. She had few intimate
relationships. For all her devotion to her drunkards, he was the only
personal happiness in her life.

He went into the kitchen in search of her. This was evidently one of
their servant's uncounted hours. While he was making himself some tea he
heard his mother's key in the door. He called to her, and she appeared.

"Why my hat, Mother dear?" he asked gently as he kissed her.

Mrs. Wayne smiled absently, and put up her hand to the soft felt hat she
was wearing.

"I just went out to post some letters," she said, as if this were a
complete explanation; then she removed a mackintosh that she happened to
have on, though the day was fine. She was then seen to be wearing a dark
skirt and a neat plain shirt that was open at the throat. Though no
longer young, she somehow suggested a boy--a boy rather overtrained; she
was far more boyish than Wayne. She had a certain queer beauty, too;
not beauty of Adelaide's type, of structure and coloring and elegance,
but beauty of expression. Life itself had written some fine lines of
humor and resolve upon her face, and her blue-gray eyes seemed actually
to flare with hope and intention. Her hair was of that light-brown shade
in which plentiful gray made little change of shade; it was wound in a
knot at the back