With this slightly saucy allusion to his mysterious past, Stella kissed her finger tips to Mrs. Sinclair and closed the door softly behind her.
After Stella had gone Maurice seemed suddenly fatigued. The light vanished from his eyes and his tones grew languid, while a certain nervousness of manner betrayed to Mrs. Sinclair's acute perceptions the fact that, for some reason, her son felt ill at ease in his mother's presence.
Kissing him fondly she made haste to say, "Now darling, you had better go right to your room. We shall have plenty of time to talk in the future, for I am an old woman now and I trust my son will never feel like leaving me again."
"How old is Stella, mother?" was his somewhat irrelevant remark when she had finished speaking.
"She is twenty-one to day, my son, and I think you will agree that a sweeter, truer woman could hardly be imagined," responded his mother warmly.
"She is very beautiful," Maurice began, but checking himself, he said abruptly, "I have spent the last three years of my life wandering about in the heart of the Great Desert of Shamo, and some times I fancy the sulphurous fumes and heat of its burning lakes have impregnated my blood and tainted my whole system with a substance, which, although capable of overcoming other impurities, is but a poor choice between the natural and the acquired evil."
Here, seeing his mother's look of complete mystification, he paused and added playfully, "Ah, mother, I have frightened and perplexed you all ready: I must retire and to-morrow you shall say whether I am brute or human, for in truth, some times I can hardly tell." With these words he laughed a low, musical and extraordinarily joyous laugh that had attracted her once before that evening, then touching his mother's cheek lightly with his lips, went hurriedly from the room, through the hall and up the wide staircase.
On reaching the hall above he paused for a moment as if in doubt and then turned abruptly toward the west wing and, notwithstanding Stella's parting words, passed swiftly on until he reached the door of his "old quarters," then he drew a small, odd looking vial from his pocket and with it still in his hand, turned the handle and without word or warning, quietly entered the room.