vanished about the corner at the head of the lane. And there she
generally lay waiting for him when he came home. If he was late, which
happened almost every day, she would be the victim of a thousand fears
as she made more and more frequent trips between the kitchen and the
living-room window. When he finally came, she acted as if she had not
seen him for months while he pretended to be more or less bored by her
attentions.

But there were moments, too, when her tenderness flared into startling
outbursts of bleak, cutting anger, giving way in the end to floods of
hysterical tears. A couple of such tempests formed part of Keith's
earliest reliable memories.

VII

As a rule Keith slept far too soundly to be aroused by anything. One
night, however, there was so much loud talking in the room that he woke
up completely. For a while he lay quite still, but with wide-open
eyes and ears.

The big lamp had been placed on the washstand back of the chaiselongue
on which he was lying, evidently in order to prevent its light from
falling on his face.

His mother was seated, fully dressed, on the edge of the bed across the
room. Her face was white as snow. Her eyes blazed with a sort of cold
fire. Her whole body seemed to tremble with a feeling so tense that he
could not find words for it.

The father was leaning far backwards on an ordinary chair, with his
outstretched right arm resting on the dining table. His face was flushed
and the thick fringe of black hair about the bald top of his head was
slightly disordered. He tried to smile, but the smile turned into a
grin. When he spoke, his voice was a little thick.

"I can't keep entirely away from my comrades." he said. "They think
already that I am too stuck up to associate with them. I haven't been
out for two weeks. I haven't had a drop more tonight than I can stand.
And it isn't twelve o'clock yet."

All of a sudden Keith saw the cold, angry light go out of his mother's
eyes. Her face twisted convulsively. She sank into a heap on the bed,
sobbing as if her heart would break then and there.

"Carl," she screamed between two sobs. "You'll kill me if you talk like
that to me!"

"Like that," he repeated in a stunned toneless voice. Then his face
flushed almost purple. A hard look came into his eyes, and he rose so
abruptly that the chair upset behind him. At the same time he brought
down his fist with such violence that the table nearly toppled over.

"I'll be dam