"I should not wonder," she continued, "if she made three little wounds on him, as a baby, as I have read Greek mothers do, to place him under the protection of the Trinity. She must have loved him—her first boy-baby! And I think the most of what he was came to him from her."
Thorn moved his position suddenly, and Barbara saw his shoulders rise in a deep-taken breath.
"Love of right and hatred of wrong," he said, "admiration for the beautiful and the true, faith in man and woman, sensitiveness to artistic things—ah, it is most often the mother who makes men what they are. Not our strength or power of calculation, but her heart and power to love! In the twilight of every home one sees the mother-souls glowing like fireflies. I never had a picture of my mother. I would rather have her portrait than a fortune!"
His voice was charged with feeling. She felt a strange flutter of the heart, a painful and yearning sympathy such as she had never felt before.
"I wonder what he saw from that Greek cradle," she resumed. "I could never fancy the room so well. I suppose it had pictures. Do you think so?"
He nodded. "And maybe—on one wall—a Greek ikon, protected by a silver case ... I've seen such ... that left exposed only the olive-brown faces and hands and feet of the figures. Perhaps ... when he was very little ... he used to think the brown Virgin represented his mother and the large-eyed child himself."
"Ah," she cried, and a deeper light came in her eyes. "You have been in Greece! You have seen what he saw!" But he made no reply, and after a moment she went on:
"He had never known what terror was till one day an accident, received in play, brought him the fear of blindness. It must have stayed with him all his life after that, wherever he went—for he lived in other countries. I have a few leaves of an old diary of his ... here and there I feel it in the lines."
She, too, fell silent. "And then—?" he said.
"There my dreams end. You see how little I know of him. I don't know why he came to Japan. But he met my mother here and here they were married. I should always love Japan, if only for that."