He read it again with a feeling of awe. No matter what the shade of her olive cheek or the length of her curly hair, she was a mother with all that big word means in the language of men. Say what he might—of her art in leading him on, of her final offering herself in a hundred subtle ways in their daily life in his home—he was still responsible. He had accepted the challenge at last.
And he knew what it meant to any woman under the best conditions, with a mother's face hovering near and the man she loved by her side. He saw again the scene of his boy's birth. And then another picture—a lonely girl in a strange city without a friend—a cot in the whitewashed ward of a city's hospital—a pair of startled eyes looking in vain for a loved, familiar face as her trembling feet stepped falteringly down into the valley that lies between Life and Death!
A pitiful thing, this hour of suffering and of waiting for the unknown.
His heart went out to her in sympathy, and he answered her letter with a promise to come. But on the day he was to start for Baltimore mammy was stricken with a cold which developed into pneumonia. Unaccustomed to the rigors of a Northern climate, she had been careless and the result from the first was doubtful. To leave her was, of course, impossible.
He sent for a doctor and two nurses and no care or expense was spared, but in spite of every effort she died. It was four weeks before he returned from the funeral in the South.
He reached Baltimore in a blinding snowstorm the week preceding Christmas. Cleo had left the hospital three weeks previous to his arrival, and for some unexplained reason had spent a week or ten days in Norfolk and returned in time to meet him.
He failed to find her at the address she had given him, but was directed to an obscure hotel in another quarter of the city.
He was surprised and puzzled at the attitude assumed at this meeting. She was nervous, irritable, insolent and apparently anxious for a fight.
"Well, why do you stare at me like that?" she asked angrily.
"Was I staring?" he said with an effort at self-control.