"Will you let me?" he said, almost timidly.
"I should like you to write. I shall look for your letters, Brian. Don't forget that I shall be anxious for news of you."
Almost without knowing what he did, he sank down on his knees before her, and touched her hand reverently with his lips. She bent forward and kissed his forehead as a sister might have done.
"God bless you, Angela!" he said. He could not utter another word.
"Mother," said the girl, taking in hers the passive hand of the woman, who had sat with face averted—perhaps so that she should not meet the eyes of the man whom she could not forgive—"mother, speak to him; say good-bye to him before he goes."
The mother's hand trembled and tried to withdraw itself, but Angela would not let it go.
"One kind word to him, mother," she said. "See, he is kneeling before you. Only look at him and you will see how he has suffered! Don't let him go away from you without one word."
She guided Mrs. Luttrell's hand to Brian's head; and there for a moment it rested heavily. Then she spoke.
"If I have been unjust, may God forgive me!" she said.
Then she withdrew her hand and rose from her seat. She did not even look behind her as she walked to the bed-room door, pushed it open, entered, and closed it, and turned the key in the old-fashioned lock. She had said all that she meant to say: no power, human or divine, should wrest another word from her just then. But in her heart she was crying over and over again the words that had been upon her lips a hundred times to say.