"We are alone, Peter," she said at last.
Then she rose, and there were no more tears. Erect in the moonlight, she seemed the statue of a mourning woman.
"He is lying in our room, Peter. Won't you come?"
Peter instinctively shuddered away. Then, feeling as though a weight had just been laid on him, he asked:
"Can I help you, mother? Is there anything to do?"
"Uncle Henry is here. Come when you can."
Peter watched her move away towards the house. Self died outright in him as, filled with worship, he saw her, grave and beautiful, going to the dead man.
Soon he wondered why, now that trouble had really come, he could not so easily be moved. The tears, which so readily had started from his eyes as he had brooded on his quarrel with Miranda, would not flow now for his father. His imagination could not at once accept reality. He sat as his mother had left him, sensible of a gradual ache that stole into his brain. Time passed; and, at last, as the ache became intolerable, he heard himself desperately repeating to himself the syllables:
"Never, Never."
He would never again see his father. Then his brain at last awoke in a vision of his father, an hour ago or so, confronting Mr. Smith. Peter's emotion first sprang alive in a sharp remorse. He had that evening found his father insufferable.