when one has, in spite of oneself, the
dominating parent instinct!--but Sheila forced herself to it.

And then, when Eric was fourteen years old, the seed sprang up through
the soil and turned its face to the light. The boy came to Sheila one
day, obviously bent upon a confidence. Shy, hesitant, shamefaced he
was, but so eager. She wanted to kiss him as he stood there before
her, awkward and winsome, a little too tall for his knickerbockers,
child and adolescent contending in his face and the flush of some
portentous thing upon his cheek. She wanted to kiss him--but she
didn't. For she divined that the moment was for sterner stuff than
kisses.

"Mother, here's--here's a story I've written."

That was all; but Sheila saw her own youth, her hopes, her dreams in
his eyes. What there was in her eyes she did not know, but at
something there Eric suddenly exclaimed and put his arms around her.

And then Sheila knew that she was crying.

It was not a marvellous story--that first effort of her young
son's--but _something was there_; something that raised the crude,
immature pages above immaturity and crudity and made the little tale
better than itself. And sensing it--that evanescent, impalpable, but
infinitely promising thing--she saw the future shining through the
present.

But it was not to Eric that she went first with her discovery. She
longed to make the boy's path smooth for him before she sped him on it,
and so she went first to Ted, story in hand.

Ted had not desired talent in his wife. Would he desire it in his son?
Would he cheer and encourage, would he even tolerate, a dreamer, a
poet, a worker in mere beauty? Would he ever regard art as more than a
shadow of life?

Sheila sought him now to learn that--with Eric's story to plead for
itself.

Ted was in his den, a place sacred to those masculine pursuits and
possessions which he did not share with her. Only for momentous
affairs did she invade the shabby, comfortable, littered room, and now
Ted glanced up at her from his pipe and papers with serious expectancy.

"I'd like you to read this," she said, holding out the little
manuscript.

"Now? Is it important?"

"Yes, now. It is very important. I must have a talk with you when
you've read it."

He took it from her, and she sat down to await his verdict. The story
was short. Her suspense could have lasted but a little while. But
Eric's fate was at stake, and the minutes seemed as lagg