. She laid her other hand upon his bent head. "Yes, my
dear, yes, my dear! that was always your fault. If your taste was
offended, if anything jarred--though it might be no more than was
absolutely essential, no more than common necessity required."

"Mother, you do me more good than words can say. Yes, I know, I know--I
never have friends for that cause. I have always wanted more, more----"

"More than any one could give," she said softly. "Those whom you love
should be above humanity, Theo: their feet should not tread the ground
at all. I have always been afraid, not knowing how you would take it
when necessary commonplaces came in."

"I wonder," he said, raising his head, "whether mothers are always as
perfect comforters as you are. That was what I wanted: but nobody in the
world could have said it but you."

"Because," she said, carrying out her role unhesitatingly, though to
her own surprise and without knowing why, "only your mother could know
your faults, without there being the smallest possibility that any fault
could ever stand between you and me."

His eyes had the look of being strained and hot, yet there seemed a
little moisture in the corners, a moisture which corresponded with the
slight quiver in his lip, rather than with the light in his eyes. He
held her hand still in his and caressed it almost unconsciously. "I am
not like you in that," he said. Alas no! he was not like her in that:
though the accusation of being fastidious, fantastic, intolerant of the
usual conditions of humanity, was, for the moment, the happiest thing
that could be said to him, yet a fault! a fault would stand between him
and whosoever was guilty of it, mother even--love still more. A fault:
he was determined that she should be perfect, the woman whom he had
chosen. To keep her perfect he was glad to seize at that suggestion of
personal blame, to acknowledge that he himself was impatient of every
condition, intolerant even of the bonds of humanity. But if there ever
should arise the time when the goddess should be taken from her pedestal,
when the woman should be found fallible like all women, heaven preserve
poor Theo then. The thought went through Mrs. Warrender's mind like a
knife. What would become of him? He had given himself up so unreservedly
to his love, he had sacrificed his own fastidious temper in the first
place, had borne the remarks of the county, had supported Geoff, had
allowed himself to be laughed at and blam