"Tough work, wasn't it, waiting for me to get through, dear Mom? For I know you did wait. I know you meant that some day——"
He laid a hand on her head, his lips trembling. He knew he was postponing, evading. She shrank back in some conviction also of postponing, evading. All her soul was honest. She hated deceit—though all her life she had been engaged in this glorious deceit which now was about to end.
"Tough sometimes, yes," she said, smiling up at him. "But don't you like it?"
"If my dad had lived," said Don, "or if he had had very much to give either of us, you'd never have lived this way at all. Too bad he died, wasn't it, Mom?"
He smiled also, or tried to smile, yet restraint was upon them both, neither dared ask why.
She caught up his hand suddenly, spying upon it a strand of blood.
"Don!" she exclaimed, wiping it with her kerchief, "you are hurt!"
He laughed at this. "Surely you don't know much of boxing or football," said he.
"You ought not to fight," she reproved him. "On your first day—and all the town saw it, Don! You and I—we ought not to fight. What—on the first day I've seen you in all these years—the first day you're out of college—the first day I could ever in all my life claim you for my very own? I believe I would have claimed you—yes, I do! But you came—when you knew you had a mother, why you came to her, didn't you, Don? Even me. But you mustn't fight."
"Why?" He turned upon her quickly, his voice suddenly harsh, his eyes narrowing under drawn brows. "Why shouldn't I fight?"