'Mother!' he faltered. 'Why?--what----?'
He paused, feeling there was no reason here, no reason at all in the clinging hands about his knees, in the passionate kisses rained on them regardless of dress trousers, regardless of everything save that here was the son that had been lost, and was found again!
Not so Chris Davenant. With a certain rage he realised, even as he bent over her with tears in his eyes stirred to his innermost soul, that above all this emotion lay a doubt to what he ought to do next; whether he should raise his mother to the chair beside his, raise her to the unaccustomed, or crouch down on the floor beside her, himself, in forgotten fashion. Horrible, hateful thought; yet there it was!
She solved the question herself unconsciously with the dignified humility of Eastern womanhood. 'Sit thou there, son of thy father, master of my widowed house,' she said, 'so at thy feet shall I find son and husband once more!'
Then, in a perfect ecstasy of joy, she lifted her worn, refined face to his. 'Yea! I shall find Krishn, my Bala-Krishna once more! Lo! canst thou forgive thy mother, child; thy mother who denounced thee, not knowing that thou hadst returned--that thou hadst come back?'
'Come back?' he echoed.
Her face was as the face of an angel over the sinner that repenteth. She reached her thin arm from her shroud, and laid her finger on his lip.
'Hush, child! Let it be forgotten. Let it be as if it had never been. Thou canst tell me, after, why thou saidst no word. Yet Krishn, how could I tell? But for the old pujâri who laid the caste mark on thy forehead again, I might never have known.'
He understood then; understood why she had come to him; why that clinging mother's touch was his own once more. Poor mother!
'Lo! Krishn!' she went on, interrupting herself hastily at the look on his face, 'be not angry with me. If thou didst know the tears I have shed since he told me but yesterday! How could I know? And to think I might have killed thee. Say thou dost forgive me!'