'I failed him. I thought then only of my man, and I had no prayers for my boy. Ah, Christian, Christian!'
Doubt had entered. Lois knelt and prayed.
Rhoda wavered. Her estimate or the world's, the partial or the vindictive, shrank to their due proportions, as Lois thus set Christian's crime before the eye of Heaven. She wavered, turned, and fell kneeling, clinging and weeping, convicted of the vain presumption that would keep Christian from the hands of his God.
She was bidden away when Lois caught a sound of Christian.
His mother held him by the window for the first word.
'Christian, where is Philip?'
His startled eyes were a stab to her soul; the tide that crimsoned his very brow checked hers at her heart. He failed of answering, and guilt weighed down his head. She rallied on an inspiration that greatest crimes blanch, never redden, and 'You have not killed him?' was a question of little doubt.
'No, thank God! no!' he said, and she saw that he shook.
Then he tried to out with the whole worst truth, but he needed to labour for breath before he could say with a catch: 'I meant to—for one moment.'
To see a dear face stricken so! Do the damned fare worse? More dreadful than any reproach was her turning away with wrung hands. She returned to question.