"There is something wrong here too," he thought, and resolved to investigate the matter thoroughly, early the next morning.
But the mother, whose memory was short, began laughing again. "What a big beard you've grown!" she said admiringly; "and how close-cropped your hair is! And you are brown, oh, so brown; you look exactly as if you had come from the man[oe]uvres."
And while she fondled him, her gaze rested on him in a shy scrutiny. There was an undertone of anxiety in her manner despite her proud tenderness. He had come home as a kind of prodigal son. His soul had fed on husks, and yet he had thrived on them withal. Between mother and son there was much that was difficult to speak of, and what was most difficult of all would have to remain unspoken.
"I will go and see if your bed is ready," she said, rising, and combing the ends of his beard with her hand in passing.
As she opened the door into the next room, which was in darkness, she started back with a cry, answered by a simultaneous, only more alarmed exclamation from the other side. At the same instant Leo saw a glimmer of something white, and then another, disappear into the darkness.
Mamma turned to him, and said, with a titter, "It was the girls."
The lovely double picture that he had seen on the terrace rose before his eyes.
"Come in," he called out, and stood up as if he were going to the door.
But his mother stopped him, laughing. "For goodness' sake, let them run away to bed," she said. "They were in their nightgowns."