Her eyes filled with the near tears. She clung to his hand as though he would protect her against her own bitter thoughts.
"Does your head ache?" he asked. There was solicitude in his voice, but still that strange, dreadful aloofness, more dreadful because he was not conscious of it.
"No," she answered. She looked down at him and out of an impulse she cried: "Do you still love me, Graham?"
"I love you, mother," he answered gravely. But she knew then that there would be work on her part before once again she stood to him his ideal.
She had dwelt in the core of his heart; perhaps in time she could once more move near to that sanctified place. The intimate human relation, husband and wife, parent and child—she knew with pain and yearning that all else—position, great wealth, worldly power—were vain beside the joy of those relations in their purest.
Perhaps a week later Suzanna was washing the supper dishes, and Maizie wiping them. Their mother was upstairs with Peter and the baby, Mr. Procter in the attic. As Maizie finished the last dish, the door bell rang.
Suzanna ran to the foot of the stairs.
"Oh, mother, shall I answer?" she cried.
"I wish you would," Mrs. Procter called down. "Peter has a stone bruise and I'm using liniment."