“Mother!” he cried, with a pathetic ring of pain in his virile voice. He held out his arms. The movement was an appeal.
But she waved him back.
“Between mothers and sons,” she said, “there is a union of sympathy, of interest, not only of intercourse. Dogs have mothers, Otto, and love them and forget them. And when they meet again, after twelve weeks—mother and son walk side by side, but the pup doesn’t know.”
She held out her trembling fingers to the little animal beside her.
“The mother does,” she said, tremulously. “The mother does.”
Otto stood by the Dresden gimcracks of the mantel-piece. His head was bent, but across the level eyebrows lay a bar of resolve.
“If you would only let me explain—” he began.
“Surely I can do that for myself. You are ‘in love’ with the girl, to use the cant phrase. There is no more beautiful word in the world, and none more insulted. With you it simply means that you have been caught by the charms of a piquant brown face. You, who are nearly forty, whose calf period might surely be past. Faugh! you men are all the same, like dogs again! You talk of piety, affection, ambition, but when the moment comes you run after the nearest cur. Otto, I won’t say any more. I have said too much already. In truth, there is nothing to say. There is only a curse to bear. Nowadays, it seems, the children curse the parents. It may be less melodramatic, but the results are far more visible to the naked eye.”
Then he broke down before her hard, her hopeless misery, and knelt by her side.
“Mother, I love her,” he said. “Never mind what the word means to me, it need mean but little to you. I will take her away to some place where you need but rarely see her.”