"You did that?"
"I am your brother, Paul. I couldn't be a cad as well as a thief. Yes, I told her. I told her more, what you never knew. I let Craig believe that I was you, Paul. I wore your clothes, your scarf-pins, your hats. In that I was a black villain. God! What a hell I lived in.… Ah, mother!" Arthur dropped his head upon his arms again.
"Paul, my son!"
It was Warrington's chair that toppled over. Framed in the portières stood his mother, white-haired, pale but as beautiful as of old.
"I am sorry. I had hoped to get away without your knowing."
"Why?"
"Oh, because there wasn't any use of my coming at all. I'd passed out of your life, and I should have stayed out. Don't worry. I've got everything mapped out. There's a train at midnight."
Arthur stood up. "Mother, I am the guilty man. I was the thief. All these years I've let you believe that Paul had taken the money.…"
"Yes, yes!" she interrupted, never taking her eyes off this other son. "I heard everything behind these curtains. You were going away, Paul, without seeing me?"
"What was the use of stirring up old matters? Of bringing confusion into this house?" He did not look at her. He could not tell her that he now knew what had drawn him hither, that all along he had deceived himself.