He looked back at her timidly as he closed the door. She had resumed her writing; the red sunset light fell on her black gown, on her stately head, on her profile, cut clear as on a cameo.
He dared not return.
The mother whom he had known in other years, on whose knee he had rested his head as she told him tales in the twilight hour, whose hand had caressed his curls, whose smile had rewarded his stammering Latin or his hardly achieved line of handwriting, who had stooped over him in his drowsy dreams, and made him think of angels, the mother who had said to Egon Vàsàrhely: 'This is my Bela: love him a little for my sake,' seemed as far from him as though she were lying in her tomb.
She, when the tapestry had fallen behind the slender figure of her little son, continued to write on. It was hard, dry matter that she wrote of; the condition of her miners amongst the silver ore of the north-east. She forced her mind to it, she compelled her will and her hand; that was all. These things depended on her; she would not neglect them, she strove to find in them that distraction which lighter natures seek in pleasure. But in vain she now endeavoured to compel her attention to the details she was following and correcting; soon they became to her so confused that they were unintelligible; for once her intelligence refused to obey her will. The child's words haunted her. She laid down her pen, pushed aside the reports and the letter in which she was replying to them, and rising paced to and fro the long polished floor of the library.
It was here that he had first bowed before her on that night when Hohenszalras had sheltered him from the storm.
'We had a mass of thanksgiving!' she thought.
The child's words haunted her. Not to know even that when they had passed nine years together in the closest of all human ties! For the first time the misgiving came to her, had she been too harsh? No; it would have been impossible to have done less; many would have done far more in chastisement of the fraud upon their honour and good faith. Yet as she recalled their many hours of joy it seemed as if she had remembered these too little. Then again she scouted her own weakness. What had been all his life beside her save one elaborate lie?
The broad shafts of the blazing sunset slanted across the inlaid woods of the floor which she paced; the windows were open, the birds sang in the rose boughs and ivy without. The summers would come thus, one after another, with their intolerable light, and the intolerable laughter of the unconscious children; and she would carry her burden through them, though the day was for ever dark for her.
Time had been when she had thought that she should die if he were lost to her; but she lived on and marvelled at herself. Her very soul seemed to have gone from her with the destruction of her love. Her body seemed to her but a mere shell, an inanimate pulseless thing. The only thing that seemed alive in her was shame.
She paced now up and down the long room while the sunset died and the grey evening dulled the painted panes of the casements. The boy's question had pierced through her frozen serenity. It was true that she had no knowledge where his father was; he might be dead, he might be killed by his own hand—she knew nothing. She had bidden him let her forget that he had ever lived beside her, and he had obeyed her. He might be in the world of men, careless and content, consoled by others, or he might be in his grave.