"What nonsense!" Mrs. Brandon turned back to her book impatiently. "There never was any one so strong and healthy."
"He's always worrying about something. It's his nature."
"Yes, I suppose so."
Joan vanished. Mrs. Brandon sat, staring before her, her mind running with the clock--tick-tick-tick-tick--and then suddenly jumping at the mellow liquid gurgle that it sometimes gave. Would her husband come in and say good-night?
How she had grown, during these last weeks, to loathe his kiss! He would stand behind her chair, bending his great body over her, his red face would come down, then the whiff of tobacco, then the rough pressure on her cheek, the hard, unmeaning contact of his lips and hers. His beautiful eyes would stare beyond her, absently into the room. Beautiful! Why, yes, they were famous eyes, famous the diocese through. How well she remembered those years, long ago, when they had seemed to speak to her of every conceivable tenderness and sweetness, and how, when he thus had bent over her, she had stretched up her hand and found the buttons of his waistcoat and pushed her fingers in, stroking his shirt and feeling his heart thump, thump, and so warm beneath her touch.
Life! Life! What a cheat! What a cheat! She jumped from her chair, letting the book drop upon the floor, and began to pace the room. And why should not this, too, cheat her once again? With the tenderness, the poignancy with which she now looked upon Morris so once she had looked upon Brandon. Yes, that might be. She would cheat herself no longer. But she was older now. This was the last chance to live--definitely, positively the last. It was not the desire to be loved, this time, that drove her forward so urgently as the desire to love. She knew that, because Falk would do. If Falk would stay, would let her care for him and mother him and be with him, she would drive Morris from her heart and brain.
Yes, she almost cried aloud in the dark room. "Give me Falk and I will leave the other. Give me my own son. That's my right--every mother's right. If I am refused it, it is just that I should take what I can get instead."
"Give him to me! Give him to me!" One thing at least was certain. She could never return to the old lethargy. That first meeting with Morris had fired her into life. She could not go back and she was glad that she could not....
She stopped in the middle of the room to listen. The hall-door closed softly; suddenly the line of light below the door vanished. Some one had turned down the hall-lamp. She went to the drawing-room door, opened it, looked out, crying softly:
"Falk! Falk!"