Trent stared at her in blank amazement.
“Have you no conscience?” he asked at last. “Have you never had any?”
She looked at him a little piteously.
“You don't understand,” she muttered. “You don't understand. I'm his mother. And I want him to be happy.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I am sorry,” he said, “that I cannot help you. But I'm afraid Tim's happiness isn't going to be purchased at my expense. I haven't the least intention of blackening myself in the eyes of the woman I love for the sake of Tim—or of twenty Tims. Please understand that, once and for all.”
He gestured as though to indicated that she should precede him to the window by which she had entered. But she made no movement to go. Instead she flung back her cloak as though it were stifling her, and caught him impetuously by the arm.
“Maurice! Maurice! For God's sake, listen to me!” Her voice was suddenly shaken with passionate entreaty. “Use some other method, then! Break with her some other way! If you only knew how I hate to ask you this—I who have already brought only sorrow and trouble into your life! But Tim—my son—he must come first!” She pressed a little closer to him, lifting her face imploringly. “Maurice, you loved me once—for the sake of that love, grant me my boy's happiness!”
Quietly, inexorably, he disengaged himself from the eager clasp of her hand. Her beautiful, agonized face, the vehement supplication of her voice, moved him not a jot.
“You are making a poor argument,” he said coldly. “You are making your request in the name of a love that died three-and-twenty years ago.”