She broke forth then, the color surging up into her face. "Why are you so unjust to me? Did I suggest that you neglect your mother? You could not expect me to take your place."
"No—" he spoke sadly. "No, I could not expect that. Believe me, please, when I say that I put blame on no one but myself. Money—that has been the main thing in life. Money, and more money. There was always need for all I could make." His eyes swept her lovely gown; the costly cape across her arm. Thought, much money, much time had gone into building her perfect completeness. "No. A man cannot expect another, even a wife, to fulfill his sacred obligations."
Perhaps the thought came to her that a wife need not ask so much, ask so demandingly that a man must yield his finest dreams, his every hour to fulfill her wishes. The color deepened and deepened in her cheek. Perhaps she remembered their first months together when in the grayest days he saw color, because they belonged one to the other.
They had both forgotten Graham. She looked at the boy now. He stood regarding her with that strange aloofness in his eyes, that sharp question. She felt all at once very lonely.
For Graham, she knew, was estranged from her! And now she knew that she desired most of all his love in all its purity. Her social strivings, her desire for leadership balanced against Graham's former worshipful, chivalrous love for her, dwindled to a pitiful insignificance.
And with the value of her child's love, she suddenly realized the older mother's longings—the one who had just gone on. An old mother—in her full years mourning for the child she had borne, nursed, and succored. Grieving, that in his manhood he had gone from her; that he had seemingly forgotten in his feverish striving after wealth the lessons she had sought to teach him.
Was the wife to blame for this? But some stern sense of justice derided her efforts to exculpate herself. She remembered how she had held the power to influence him in the early days of their marriage; he had believed so wonderfully in the whiteness of her ideals. He was malleable material in her fingers.
But above and beyond his love she had put wealth and fine position. He had given her both, but now before her stood her husband and son estranged from her.
She moved away at last. With new awakening power of perception, she felt she was stripped of everything of worth. When she was half-way down the wide hall she heard a step behind her. She paused, waited, and in a moment Graham was beside her.
He put his hand in hers. "Mother," he said, quietly.