“Are you all right, Mother?” he said at last.
“I am very tired,” she told him.
“Yes—yes, of course you are. But——”
“Oh—yes,” she said gently, “I am all right.”
“Sure?”
“Yes, Basil!”
“Quite, Mother?” he persisted.
“Yes, Basil!” she told him again, with emphasis this time. And then she smiled a little, very sadly, thinking how sardonic it was that he should be standing there cross-examining her.
“Thank God!” he whispered fervently—all that was best in him welling up in gratitude that his mother had escaped a more cruel wrong than he had inflicted on murdered Nang. For Nang had loved him!
And then he shuddered sickly at the sudden thought that always his mother would know that he had betrayed a girl to her death and worse, a girl who had trusted him—that always his mother would be thinking of it, condemning him—that all the clean sweetness of their old-time, life-long intimacy was tainted—gone! Always his mother must feel towards him regret—despisal. Could he ever wipe that out? Never. Banish it or even dim it for a moment? Be “her boy” again, if but for an hour?