"I am not tired," she answered.
She had aged a little since her husband's death, but otherwise she had not changed. She looked up at her son just as she had looked at his father,—watchfully, but saying little.
"Are you going to bed?"
"I am going upstairs," he replied. But he did not say that he was going to bed.
He bade her good-night shortly afterward, and went to his room. It was the one his father had used before his death, and the trunk containing his belongings stood in one corner of it.
For a short time after entering the room he paced the floor restlessly and irregularly. Sometimes he walked quickly, sometimes slowly; once or twice he stopped short, checking himself as he veered toward the corner in which stood the unused trunk.
"I'm in a queer humor," he said aloud. "I'm thinking of it as if—as if it were a temptation to sin. Why should I?"
He made a sudden resolute movement forward. He knelt down, and, turning the key in the lock, flung the trunk-lid backward.
There was only one thing he wanted, and he knew where to find it. It lay buried at the bottom, under the unused garments, which gave forth a faint, damp odor as he moved them. When he rose from his knees he held the wooden case in his hand. After he had carried it to the table and opened it, and the model stood again before him he sat down and stared at it with a numb sense of fascination.
"I thought I had seen the last of it," he said; "and here it is."