"Nadine, my dear," she said, "I started the moment I got your telegram. Tell me all you can. How is he? How did it happen? You only said he had had a bad accident, and wanted me."
Nadine kissed her.
"Oh! Mama," she said. "Thank God it wasn't an accident. It was done on purpose. He meant it just like that. But you don't know anything; I forgot. Will you come to my room?"
"Yes, let us go. Now tell me at once."
"We have had a frightful gale," she said, "and this morning Hughie saw a fishing-boat close in land, driving on to the reef. There was just one shrimp of a boy on it, and Hughie went straight in, like a duck to water, and got him off and swam back with him. There was a rope and Seymour and Berts pulled him in. And when they got close in, Hughie put the boy on his back—oh, Mama, thank God for men like that!—and the breakers banged him down on the beach, and the boy was unhurt. And Hughie may die very soon, or he may live—"
Nadine's voice choked for a moment. All day she had not felt a sob rise in her throat.
"And if he lives," she said, "he may never be able to walk again, and I love him."
Then came the tempest of tears, tears of joy and sorrow, a storm of them, fruitful as autumn rain, fruitful as the sudden deluges of April, with God-knows-what warmth of sun behind. The drought of summer in her, the ice of winter in her had been broken up in the rain that makes the growth and the life of the world. The frozen ground melted under it, the soil, cracked with drought, drank it in: the parody of life that she had lived became but the farce that preceded sweet serious drama, tragedy it might be, but something human.... And Dodo, woman also, understood that: she too had lived years that parodied herself, and knew what the awakening to womanhood was, and the immensity of that unsuspected kingdom. It had come late to her, to Nadine early: some were almost born in consciousness of their birthright, others died without realizing it. So, mother and daughter, they sat there in silence, while Nadine wept her fill.
"It was the splendidest adventure," she said at length, lifting her head. "It was all so gay. He shouted to that little boy in the boat to encourage him to cling on, and oh, those damned reefs were so close. And when they rode in, Hughie like a horse with a child on his back over that—that precipice, he said something again to encourage him."
Nadine broke down again for a moment.