The room was very still. The two looking into each other's eyes needed no words; the battling mother had apparently reached the end of effort. Yet it was not the end. As she stood there a slow illumination grew in her face—the knowledge, tragic and triumphant, that if Love would save others, itself it cannot save! . . . "I'm not afraid that he will tire of me," Elizabeth had said; and David's mother, looking at him with ineffable compassion, said, very gently:
"I was not afraid of that, once, myself."
That was all. She was standing up, clinging to the table; her face gray, her chin shaking. They neither of them grasped the sense of her words; then suddenly David caught his breath:
"What did you say?"
"I said—" She stopped. "Oh, my poor David, I wouldn't tell you if I could help it; if only there was any other way! But there isn't. I have tried, oh, I have tried every other way." She put her hands over her face for an instant, then looked at him. "David, I said that I was not afraid, once, myself, that my lover would tire of me." There was absolute silence in the room. "But he did, Elizabeth. He did. He did."
Then David said, "I don't understand."
"Yes, you do; you understand that a man once talked to me just as you are talking to Elizabeth; he said he would marry me when I got my divorce. I think he meant it—just as you mean it, now. At any rate, I believed him. Just as Elizabeth believes you."
David Richie stepped back violently; his whole face shuddered. "You?" he said, "my mother? No!—no!—no!"
And his mother, gathering up her strength, cringing like some faithful dog struck across the face, pointed at him with one shaking hand.
"Elizabeth, did you see how he looked at me? Some day your son will look that way at you."