Nina looked at him pityingly.
“You must know very well, Morris, that your mother is a woman with an enormous circle of friends. One doesn’t want to be blatant,” said Nina, merely meaning that she did not want to be thought so, “but do you suppose that one day there isn’t bound to be some sort of record made—letters or journals published——” She hesitated artistically, as though implying an unlimited posthumous publicity which might doubtless be insisted upon by the enormous circle of friends, but of which modesty forbade her to speak. Morris, always more or less hypnotized by the perfect assurance which characterized his mother’s most outrageous utterances, into believing them, made a violent mental effort, and told himself that he was no longer a child.
“I don’t know what you mean, mother,” he untruly assured her; “but I can tell you one thing, and that is, as far as I am concerned, letters and everything else are invariably destroyed.”
“I should never count upon your loyalty to my memory, Morris,” said his mother sombrely.
A heavy silence prevailed.
Morris wondered vaguely, as he had often wondered before: “What is it all about?”
There never seemed to be any definite reason for the state of strain which existed between Mrs. Severing and her son, nor for the crisis of anger and reproach to which that strain was the inevitable prelude.
Morris could not see any definite reason why amicable relations between them should ever be resumed, and yet he knew that in the space of an hour, or less, it was quite possible that the atmosphere would have changed, by degrees as rapid as imperceptible, to one of complete sympathy.
That this forecast was in no way an exaggerated one was amply demonstrated on this occasion.
After her withdrawal from the room in all the dignity of grief and forgiveness—a withdrawal fraught for Morris with hypothetical diary-writing—Nina suddenly sought her son again in the course of that afternoon with every appearance of affectionate confidence.