“Smart I am. You’re a kind boy to me. Do you remember how you two boys used to say when you were grown up you would be rich and take me to my old home in Wiltshire? George won’t, now he’s going to be married.”
“But I will,” said René. “When I’ve saved money and can retire, we’ll go and live together.”
“I don’t know. It’s easy to forget old women.”
“Oh, come! A man doesn’t forget his mother.”
“Doesn’t he?”
“And old? You’re not old.”
“I’ve been old since before you were born.”
René gazed down at his mother and marveled at her in painful astonishment. In her little quiet voice she was saying things that stabbed into him, or, hardly stabbing, abraded and bruised him. And suddenly he began almost to perceive that her life was not tranquil, not the smooth pale flowing he had imagined it to be. He stared down at her, and she raised her eyes so that they met his. He dared not even tremble, so fearful was he of betraying his divination and her eyes flashed a warning, and his mind seized triumphantly upon its first intellectual mastery of emotion, and he said to himself:
“There are certain feelings and currents of sympathy which can only dwell in silence.”
Then he laughed: