His mother's eyes were turned away from him. "At least we have done it, Don," said she, with her shrewd, crooked smile. "We've not to do it over again. You can't forget what you have learned—you can't get away from your college education now, can you? You've got it—your diploma, your degree in engineering. You're a college man, Don, the only one in Spring Valley. And I'm so proud, and I'm so glad. Oh! Don—Don——"
She laid a hand on his breast shyly, almost afraid of him now—the first hand she had ever laid upon the heart of any man these twenty years. It was her son, a man finished, a gentleman, she hoped.... Could he not be a gentleman? So many things of that sort happened here in America. Poor boys had come up and come through—had they not? And even a poor boy might grow up to be a gentleman—was not that true—oh, might it not after all be true?
He laid his own hand over hers now, the hand on which the blood was not yet dried.
"Mom," said he, "I ought to go back and thrash the life out of that man yet. I ought to wring the neck of that doddering old fool marshal. I ought to whip every drunken loafer on those streets. Whose business was it? Couldn't we cross the square without all that?"
He stopped suddenly, the fatal thought ever recurring to his mind. But he lacked courage. Why should he not? Was this not far worse than facing death for both of them? Their eyes no longer sought one another.
"Mom——" said he, with effort now.
"Yes, my boy."
"Where's my dad?"
A long silence fell. Could she lie to him now?
"The truth now!" he said after a time.