“I've bored you,” she wept.
Suddenly she was weeping with all the unconcealed distressing grief of a disappointed child. She put her pretty be-ringed little hands in front of her face and recited the accumulation of her woes.
“I've done all I can for you, planned for you, given all my time for you and I've BORED you.”
“Mother!”
“Don't come near me, Poff! Don't TOUCH me! All my plans. All my ambitions. Friends—every one. You don't know all I've given up for you....”
He had never seen his mother weep before. Her self-abandonment amazed him. Her words were distorted by her tears. It was the most terrible and distressing of crises....
“Go away from me! How can you help me? All I've done has been a failure! Failure! Failure!”
8
That night the silences of Finacue Street heard Benham's voice again. “I must do my job,” he was repeating, “I must do my job. Anyhow....”
And then after a long pause, like a watchword and just a little unsurely: “Aristocracy....”