“How did you know it was mother?” she asked, turning to him with a quick, appreciative little start.
“You’re the kind of a woman who has a mother,” he answered. “Mothers leave their stamp on women like you.”
“Thank you,” said she.
“I’ve often wanted to run away from it that way, too,” he owned, “for failure made a coward of me more than once in those hard years. There’s a prospect of independence and peace in the picture you make with those few swift strokes. But I don’t see any–you haven’t put any–any–man in it. Isn’t there one somewhere?”
“No,” simply and frankly; “there isn’t any man anywhere. He doesn’t belong in the picture, so why should I draw him in?”
Dr. Slavens sighed.
“Yes; I’ve wanted to run away from it more than once.” 40
“That’s because you’ve lost your nerve,” she charged. “You shouldn’t want to run away from it–a big, broad man like you–and you must not run away. You must stay and fight–and fight–and fight! Why, you talk as if you were seventy instead of a youth of thirty-five!”
“Don’t rub it in so hard on that failure and nerve business,” he begged, ashamed of his hasty confession.
“Well, you mustn’t talk of running away then. There are no ghosts after you, are there?”