even if Jevons
had done what Mrs. Thesiger didn't yet know he'd done.

The maternal passion is a terrible thing. It has made women commit
crimes. It made my mother-in-law push Viola from her on her threshold and
turn on me as I was helping Jimmy out of the car. It made her say,
"You've brought my son-in-law. What have you done with my son?"

(To do her justice, she hadn't seen what had happened to Jimmy. Though he
was tired and weak, he could still stand up and stagger along if you held
him tight.)

And the maternal passion is not more terrible than the passion that Viola
had for Jevons. It made her say to her mother as the Canon and I brought
Jimmy in (the dear old man had seen in an instant why he wore his coat
slung loose over his right shoulder), "You can see what we're doing with
my husband."

And when we were all in the drawing-room and I was explaining gently that
Reggie was all right, but that we'd _had_ to send him to the military
hospital, it made her say, "If it wasn't for your son-in-law your son
wouldn't be alive."

God knows what thirst she satisfied, what bitterness she exhausted, what
secret anguish she avenged.

They were all there, the Thesiger women--they had come, you see, to meet
Reggie--Victoria and Millicent and Mildred; and they heard her. But it
was Mildred who _saw_. She spoke to her mother.

"Can't you _see_?" she said.

Viola was kneeling by the sofa where her father had made Jimmy lie, and
she had unbuttoned and taken from him his heavy coat. She looked at me
and said, "Please take them away somewhere and tell them. Jimmy _is_ so
tired."

I know that must seem awful. It _was_ awful to come back from the
battlefields of Flanders, from sieges and sackings and slaughter, and see
the women flashing fire at each other. And they were mother and daughter.
But, you see, they were women. I know that the war should have purged
them of their passions (perhaps it did purge them); but your lover is
your lover and your son your son for all that.

And it wasn't easy for Mrs. Thesiger to see how her son-in-law could
have saved her son. I am not sure that she wouldn't have thought it
presumption in Jevons to suppose that he could save anybody, let alone
her son. There were people like the Thesigers from whom heroism was
expected as a matter of course; and there were people like Jevons. You
know what she said about his going to the front.

When I had finished the tale--and I let her have the wh