“But he——”
“He was always talking about feeling things the same as you. There was a lot of good in your father though his own people would never admit it, and mine could never see it—— But it’s no good talking. It’s all done.”
“He left you.”
“A boy like you can’t judge a man.”
“Oh, but I know.”
“You can’t get anything for the like of that out of books. There’s some men can stay with a woman and some can’t, and which you’ll be you’ll know when you come to it.”
René stared at his mother. She looked very small, sitting there by the empty fireplace. She seemed to be talking to him from a great distance away, from beyond the Something which he had always felt to be in life. In the glade in Scotland he had thought to have surmounted it, but now, when he thought of it, that had already dwindled away and become as small and rounded as that memory of his father which had haunted him in his waiting. Cathleen seemed so remote that he was alarmed. The foundations of omnipotent everlasting love were undermined! Worst of all, he knew that it had become impossible to talk of her. Not even her image in his mind could dwell in that house. And his mother—his mother was saying horrible, worldly things in a thin, weary voice. In fierce rebellion his innocence rose up against her. It was impossible for him to admit a fall from grace. Either you loved or you did not. If you loved, it was forever. If you did not, then you were damned past all hope; at least you were, if you were a man. All women were Dulcineas to this Quixote.
So moved was he, so distressed, that he lost the sequence of his thoughts, and they pursued their careers in his head regardless of his comfort or immediate needs. He was left inarticulate.
“You’ll catch all the flies in the house in your mouth if you don’t close it,” said his mother.
He snapped his teeth together, and said fiercely: