avid. You are violent."

"Your son has been a cad. Now he is a man, and must either be violent or
weep." He looked away from her out at the flying hedgerows, then took up
the fruitless discussion again, striving with more patience to arouse in
his mother a sense of the utter worldliness of her stand. She met him at
every point with the obtuse and age-long arguments of her class. When at
last he cried out, "But what of my son, mother, my little son, and the
heir to all this grandeur which means so much to you?" Her eyelids
quivered and she looked down, merely saying, "His mother has offered you
a solution to that difficulty which seems to me the only wise one. You
say she proposes to keep him a year or two and then send him to us."

"Ah, you are like steel, mother." David spoke pleadingly, "You thought
him a beautiful child?"

"I did, and a wholesome one, which goes to show that you may safely
trust him with her for a time. Moreover, his mother has a right to him
and the comfort she may find in him for a few years. You see I would be
quite just to her. I do not accuse her of being designing in marrying
you. No doubt it was quite your own fault. It is a position you two
young people rushed into romantically and most foolishly, and you must
both suffer the consequences. It is sad, but it must be regarded in the
light of hard common sense, and my ungrateful task seems to be to place
it in that light for both your sakes."

Still David watched the hedgerows with averted face.

"You are listening, David?"

"Yes, mother, yes. Common sense you said."

"Can't you see, that to bring her here, where she does not belong--where
she never will be received as belonging, even though she is your
wife--will only cause suffering to you both? Eventually
misunderstandings will arise, then will come alienation and unhappiness.
Then again, yours must be in a measure a public life, unless you mean to
shirk responsibility. Has your country no claim on you?"

"I have no thought of shirking my duty, and am prepared to think and act
also--"

"You wish it to be effective? Has it never occurred to you how your
avenues will be cut off if you marry a wife beneath your class?"

"What in God's name will my wife have to do with England's African
policy? Damme--"

"David!"

"Mother--I beg your pardon--"

"She may have everything to do with it. No man can stand alone and foist
his ideas upon such a body of men, without backing. Instead of ha