A knot rose in my throat and paralysed awhile my speech. Then with a sudden sob, I sprang forward and hobbled to her upon my wounded feet. I flung myself down upon my knees, buried my head in her lap, and all that I could cry was:
“Mother! Mother!”
Whether perceiving my disorder, my distraught and suffering condition, what remained of the woman in her was moved to pity; whether my cry acting like a rod of Moses upon that rock of her heart which excess of piety had long since sterilized, touched into fresh life the springs that had long since been dry, and reminded her of the actual bond between us, her tone was more kindly and gentle than I had ever known it.
“Agostino, my child! Why are you here?” And her wax-like fingers very gently touched my head. “Why are you here—and thus? What has happened to you?”
“Me miserable!” I groaned.
“What is it?” she pressed me, an increasing anxiety in her voice.
At last I found courage to tell her sufficient to prepare her mind.
“Mother, I am a sinner,” I faltered miserably.
I felt her recoiling from me as from the touch of something unclean and contagious, her mind conceiving already by some subtle premonition some shadow of the thing that I had done. And then Gervasio spoke, and his voice was soothing as oil upon troubled waters.
“Sinners are we all, Agostino. But repentance purges sin. Do not abandon yourself to despair, my son.”