midly, trying
to give him a cue for praise of his love. "It's such astonishing luck to
find a girl whose sense will be as much solid good to you as a fortune
in the bank and who looks as pretty as a rose-tree at the same time."

He made no response. The words were strangled in her throat, and she
fell to tapping her foot rhythmically against the fender. Her eyes were
moist; this was so different from the talk she had expected.

Presently his shoulders twitched. "Don't do that, mother dear," he said
impatiently.

"I'm sorry, darling," she answered wearily. She threw herself back in
her chair and clenched her fists. Desperation fevered her, and she began
to speak vindictively. "Of course it was a great relief to me when I saw
the kind of girl Ellen is, considering how up till now you've sidled
past women of any sort of character as if you'd heard that men got sent
to prison for loving any but fools."

He laughed uneasily.

"Yes," she went on; "you always seemed to be looking carefully for
anything you could find that was as insipid as a water-melon. You can't,
you know, possibly count your love-affairs as amongst your successes."
She jerked her head back, her lips retracted in a kind of grin.
"Mariquita de Rojas!" she jeered.

He started, though not much. "I never knew you knew about that," he said
mildly.

"Of course I did." She quivered with exaggerated humiliation. "To see my
son spending himself on something so nearly nothing. And then the way
you moped and raged at her when she threw you over. Seeing the poor
woman was a fool, how else could you expect her to behave but like a
fool? It was undignified of you to put the burden of being the woman you
loved on a poor thing like her--like overworking a servant girl." She
perceived that she was hot and shaking, and that she was within an ace
of betraying the secret that there sometimes rose in her heart a thirst
to beat and hurt every woman that he had ever loved. Words would pour
out that would expose her disgusting desire to strike and scratch if she
did not substitute others. So she found herself crying in a voice that
was thinner than hers: "And a married woman! To see you doing wrong!"

The moment she said it she was ashamed and drew an expunging hand across
her lips. And as she had feared, he threw over his shoulder a glance
that humorously recognised the truths which she had insincerely
suppressed: that while she desired to hurt the woman whom he had loved