ad been too much for her, and the old faintness had returned;
but when she saw her son she struggled into a sitting posture and
stretched out her hands to him as he came slowly, and almost
reluctantly, towards her.

'Cyril! my darling Cyril!' Then he took her hand and held it for a
moment. 'My boy,' she said a little piteously, 'have you nothing else
for your mother?'

But he seemed as though he failed to understand her, and when she
pointed mutely to the seat beside her, he did not at once seat himself.

'Mother,' he said, still speaking as though the words were difficult to
him, 'I have come to tell you that there shall be peace between us.'

'Does that mean you have forgiven me, Cyril?'

'It means that I will do my best to forgive you your share in the ruin
of my life--of all our lives.'

Then as he stood before her she threw her arms round him with a faint
cry; but he gently, very gently, repulsed her.

'Do not let there be any scene; I could not bear it;' and the weariness
in his voice made her heart ache still more. 'Mother, I think that we
had better never speak of these things again. As far as I am concerned,
I will willingly blot out the past from my memory. To-day we must begin
afresh--you and I.'

His tone made her shiver, and as she looked up in his dark impassive
face, and saw the deep-seated melancholy in his eyes, a sort of despair
seized her.

'Oh!' she cried passionately, 'can it be my son who speaks? Blot out the
past?--that happy past, when we were all in all to each other--when even
poverty was delicious, because I had my boy to work for me!'

'I shall work for you still.'

'Yes, but will it be the same? What do I care for the gifts you may
bring me when your heart has gone from me? How am I to bear my life when
you treat me with such coldness? Cyril, you do not know what a mother's
love is. If you had sinned, if you had come to me and said, "Will you
take my hand, red as it is with the blood of a fellow-creature?" with
all my horror I would still have taken it, for it is the hand of my
son.'

She spoke with a wild fervour that would have touched any other man; but
he only returned coldly:

'And yet you had no mercy for my father?'

Then a look of repugnance crossed her face.

'That was because I did not love him. Where there is no love there is no
self-sacrifice; but, Cyril, with all my faults, I have been a good
mother to you.'

'I know it,' he replied, 'and I hope I shall alwa