“No. Because, if it fails I prefer to ridicule myself rather than that you should ridicule me. And if I succeed the whole value of my discovery consists in keeping it secret.”
“Very well!” And his mother rose and put away her knitting. “You shall do as you will, Féodor!—you were always a spoilt boy and you will be spoilt to the end! My fault, I know!”
“Yes, your fault, beloved!” he said—“But a fault of instinctive knowledge and wisdom! For if you had not let me follow my own way I might not have stumbled by chance on another way—a way which leads——”
He broke off abruptly with a wonderful “uplifted” look in his eyes. She came to him and laid her gentle hands upon his shoulders.
“A way which leads—where, my Féodor? Tell me!”
He drew her hands down and held them warmly clasped together in his.
“The way to that ‘new heaven and new earth’ where God is with men!” he answered, in a low, rapt tone—“‘Where there shall be no more death, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain,’ and where ‘the former things are passed away!’ Be patient with my dream! It may come true!”
CHAPTER XIII
Meantime, Diana, up in her own room, was engaged in what to her had, of late years, been anything but an agreeable pastime,—namely, looking at herself in the mirror. She was keenly curious to find out what was the change in her appearance which had apparently surprised Madame Dimitrius so much that she could hardly be restrained, even by her masterful son, from expressing open wonderment. She stood before the long cheval glass, gazing deeply into it as if it were the magic mirror of the “Lady of Shalott,” and as if she saw
“The helmet and the plume