He put out
his hand to take the piece of china from her. They both gazed down on
it, as if it were a symbol, and exchanged a long glance. She gave it to
him and, bracing herself, looked around for Roger. When she found him
she started, and stared at the braid on his coat, the brass buttons, and
the brass studs on his high collar. Then she became aware of the woman,
and, with a faint, mild smile of distracted courtesy, took stock of her
uniform. His cap, lying on the table, caught her eye, and she picked it
up and turned it round and round on her hand, reading the black letters
on the magenta ribbon.

"So you've joined the Hallelujah Army, Roger?" she said, in that
muffled, indifferent tone.

"Yes," he murmured.

"Do you preach in the streets?" Her voice shook.

"Yes," he whispered.

She gave the cap another turn on her hand. "Are you happy?" she asked,
again indifferently.

"Yes," he whispered.

She flung the cap down on the table and stretched out her arms to him.
"Oh, my boy!" she cried. "Oh, my boy, I am so glad you are happy at
last!" Love itself seemed to have spread its strong wings in the room,
and the others gazed astonished until they saw her flinch, as Roger
crumpled up and fell on her breast, and visibly force herself to be all
soft, mothering curves to him.

Ellen cast down her eyes and stared at the floor. Roger's sobbing made a
queer noise. Ahe ... ahe ... ahe.... It had an unmechanical sound, like
the sewing-machine at home before it quite wore out, or Richard's
motor-bicycle when something had gone wrong; and this spectacle of a
mother giving heaven to her son by forgery of an emotion was an
unmechanical situation. It must break down soon. She looked across at
Richard and found him digging his nails into the palms of his hands, but
not so dejected as she might have feared. It struck her that he was
finding an almost gross satisfaction in the very wrongness of the
situation which was making her grieve--which must, she realised with a
stab of pain, make everyone grieve who was not themselves tainted with
that wrongness. He would rather have things as they were, and see his
mother lacerating her soul by feigning an emotion that should have been
natural to her, and his half-brother showing himself a dolt by believing
her, than see them embracing happily as uncursed mothers and their
children do. Uneasily she shifted her eyes from his absorbed face to the
far view of the river and the marshes.