tening to them on the fourth day he said suddenly:

"I'd like to be back in England, Mum, the sun's too hot."

"Very well, darling. As soon as you're fit to travel" And at once he
felt better, and--meaner.

They had been out five weeks when they turned toward home. Jon's head
was restored to its pristine clarity, but he was confined to a hat lined
by his mother with many layers of orange and green silk and he still
walked from choice in the shade. As the long struggle of discretion
between them drew to its close, he wondered more and more whether she
could see his eagerness to get back to that which she had brought him
away from. Condemned by Spanish Providence to spend a day in Madrid
between their trains, it was but natural to go again to the Prado. Jon
was elaborately casual this time before his Goya girl. Now that he was
going back to her, he could afford a lesser scrutiny. It was his mother
who lingered before the picture, saying:

"The face and the figure of the girl are exquisite."

Jon heard her uneasily. Did she understand? But he felt once more that
he was no match for her in self-control and subtlety. She could, in some
supersensitive way, of which he had not the secret, feel the pulse of
his thoughts; she knew by instinct what he hoped and feared and wished.
It made him terribly uncomfortable and guilty, having, beyond most boys,
a conscience. He wished she would be frank with him, he almost hoped for
an open struggle. But none came, and steadily, silently, they travelled
north. Thus did he first learn how much better than men women play
a waiting game. In Paris they had again to pause for a day. Jon was
grieved because it lasted two, owing to certain matters in connection
with a dressmaker; as if his mother, who looked beautiful in anything,
had any need of dresses! The happiest moment of his travel was that when
he stepped on to the Folkestone boat.

Standing by the bulwark rail, with her arm in his, she said

"I'm afraid you haven't enjoyed it much, Jon. But you've been very sweet
to me."

Jon squeezed her arm.

"Oh I yes, I've enjoyed it awfully-except for my head lately."

And now that the end had come, he really had, feeling a sort of glamour
over the past weeks--a kind of painful pleasure, such as he had tried
to screw into those lines about the voice in the night crying; a feeling
such as he had known as a small boy listening avidly to Chopin, yet
wanting to cry. And he wondered why it was