She lay back on her pillow and her voice came again nearer to her son.
"If your conscience bids you go, why did you not go at once instead of coming in here?"
"Because I promised. And you threatened to leave me if I went back to that house. I swore...." he said with infinite sadness. And he longed to cry out, "Mother, force me to keep my oath!" but the words would not come. And then she spoke again:
"Then go: do whatever your conscience bids you."
"Do not be anxious," he said, coming close up to the bed; and he stood there motionless for a few minutes and both were silent. He had a confused impression that he was standing before an altar with his mother lying upon it like some mysterious idol, and he remembered how, when he was a boy in the Seminary, he was always obliged to go and kiss her hand after he had been to confession. And something of the same repugnance and the same exaltation moved him now. He felt that if he had been alone, without her, he would have gone back to Agnes long since, worn out by that endless day of flight and strife; but his mother held him in check, and he did not know whether he was grateful to her or not.
"Do not be anxious!" Yet all the time he longed and feared that she would say more to him, or that she would light the lamp and, looking into his eyes, read all his thoughts and forbid him to go. But she said nothing. Then the mattress creaked again as she stretched herself in the bed.
And he went out.
He reflected that after all he was not a scoundrel: he was not going with any bad motive or moved by passion, but because he honestly thought that there might be some danger he could avert, and the responsibility for this danger rested upon him. He recalled the fantastic figure of the servant running across the moonlit grass, and turning back to look at him with bright eyes as she said:
"My little mistress will take courage if only you will come."