She found that his eyes were staring up at her from her lap. "Mother, what's the matter?"
"The matter?"
"You were looking at me like a judge who's passing sentence."
"Well, perhaps I am," she said wearily. "Every mother is a judge who sentences the children for the sins of the father."
His face grew dark, as it always did when he thought of his father. "Well, if you had done that I should have had a pretty bad time."
It occurred to her that there was a way, an easy way, by which she could free Richard from his excessive love for her. He would not love her any more if she told him.... "But, oh, I couldn't tell him that," her spirit groaned. "It is against nature that anyone but me should know of that. It would spoil it to speak of it." But there was no other way. If she were to go away from him he would follow her. There was no other way.
She shivered and smiled down on him, into his answering eyes. It was strange to think that this was the last time they would ever look at each other quite like that. She prepared to bring herself down like a hammer on her own delicate reluctances.
"Hush, Richard," she said. "You shouldn't talk like that. Perhaps I ought to have told you long ago that your father and I made it up before he died."
He picked himself up and stood looking down on her.
"Yes, the day before he died we made it up," she began, but fell silent because of the beating of her heart.