er time he said, "If I am a tramp at all, I am a mental tramp. I
have an unanchored mind."

It seems that he came to a realisation that there was something peculiar
about him at a very early age. He said they would look at him and
whisper to one another and that his sayings were much repeated, often in
his hearing. He knew that he was considered an extraordinary child: they
baited him with questions that they might laugh at his quaint replies.
He said that as early as he could remember he used to plan situations so
that he might say things that were strange and even shocking in a
child. His father was a small professor in a small college--a "worm" he
called him bitterly--"one of those worms that bores in books and finally
dries up and blows off." But his mother--he said she was an angel. I
recall his exact expression about her eyes that "when she looked at one
it made him better." He spoke of her with a softening of the voice,
looking often at Harriet. He talked a good deal about his mother, trying
to account for himself through her. She was not strong, he said, and
very sensitive to the contact of either friends or enemies--evidently a
nervous, high-strung woman.

"You have known such people," he said, "everything hurt her."

He said she "starved to death." She starved for affection and
understanding.

One of the first things he recalled of his boyhood was his passionate
love for his mother.

"I can remember," he said, "lying awake in my bed and thinking how I
would love her and serve her--and I could see myself in all sorts of
impossible places saving her from danger. When she came to my room to
bid me good night, I imagined how I should look--for I have always been
able to see myself doing things--when I threw my arms around her neck to
kiss her."

Here he reached a strange part of his story. I had been watching Harriet
out of the corner of my eye. At first her face was tearful with
compassion, but as the Ruin proceeded it became a study in wonder and
finally in outright alarm. He said that when his mother came in to bid
him good night he saw himself so plainly beforehand ("more vividly than
I see you at this moment") and felt his emotion so keenly that when his
mother actually stooped to kiss him, somehow he could not respond, he
could not throw his arms around her neck. He said he often lay quiet, in
waiting, trembling all over until she had gone, not only suffering
himself but pitying her, because he unders