She started from the chair—her breast heaving with despairing alarm. Again she stood before the mirror—staring with new-opened eyes at the painted face, the gaudy gown: and by these things she was now horrified.
"He won't love me!" she thought. "Not this way. He—he—couldn't!"
It struck the hour.
"Nine o'clock!" she cried. "I got to do something!"
She looked helplessly about the room. Why had he loved her? Because she was his mother! She would be his mother—nothing more: just his mother. She would go to him with that appeal. She would not seek to win him. She would but tell him that she was his mother. She would be his mother—true and tender and holy. He would not resist her plea.... This determined, she acted resolutely and in haste: she stripped off the gown, flung it on the floor, kicked the silken heap under the bed; she washed the paint from her face, modestly laid her hair, robed herself anew. And when again, with these new, seeing eyes, she looked into the glass, she found that she was young, unspoiled—still lovely: a sweetly wistful woman, whom he resembled. Moreover, there came to transform her, suddenly, gloriously, a revelation: that of the spiritual significance of her motherhood.
"Thank God!" she thought, uplifted by this vision. "Oh, thank God! I'm like them other people. I'm fit to bring him up!"
It thundered ominously.
