“But, mother! That’s all very well! I’m sure father would have agreed. If I’m going to take up drawing I ought to do it at once. That’s what the drawing-master says, and I suppose he ought to know.” He finished on a tone of insolence.
“I can’t allow you to do it yet,” said Constance, quietly. “It’s quite out of the question. Quite!”
He pouted and then he sulked. It was war between them. At times he was the image of his Aunt Sophia. He would not leave the subject alone; but he would not listen to Constance’s reasoning. He openly accused her of harshness. He asked her how she could expect him to get on if she thwarted him in his most earnest desires. He pointed to other boys whose parents were wiser.
“It’s all very fine of you to put it on father!” he observed sarcastically.
He gave up his drawing entirely.
When she hinted that if he attended the School of Art she would be condemned to solitary evenings, he looked at her as though saying: “Well, and if you are—?” He seemed to have no heart.
After several weeks of intense unhappiness she said: “How many evenings do you want to go?”
The war was over.
He was charming again. When she was alone she could cling to him again. And she said to herself: “If we can be happy together only when I give way to him, I must give way to him.” And there was ecstasy in her yielding. “After all,” she said to herself, “perhaps it’s very important that he should go to the School of Art.” She solaced herself with such thoughts on three solitary evenings a week, waiting for him to come home.