"I'm so happy, my son—so proud and happy. You've done so well; and God has watched over you so wonderfully—and protected you." Then her voice fell almost to a whisper, faltering with the words she wanted to speak, yet shrank from uttering. These spoken, she listened as intently as if for the footfall of approaching death.
"No, mother," he answered low, "no, never once since—yet I won't say I haven't felt it; I know I have, more than once. If I'm where it is—even if I catch the odour of liquor—the appetite seems to come back. And it frightened me terribly; it was like the baying of hounds," drawing closer as he spoke.
"That's like what your father used to say," she whispered, quivering.
"But never once, mother—never a single time, since. I've always remembered that first night you came into my room—and that other time."
"And I," she cried eagerly, "haven't I? I've been there many a night since then, when Jessie was asleep—I used to try and imagine it was you, Harvey," she said, turning her face on his in the uncertain light.
The gentle colloquy flowed on while the shadows deepened about the whispering pair, the one happy because youth's radiance overshone his path, the other peaceful because a deeper, truer light was gathering in her heart. One cloud, and one alone, impaired the fullness of his joy; and that was, what even his hopeful heart could not deny, that his mother's strength was obviously less than when he had seen her last. But all the devotion of the years seemed gathered up into this gracious hour; the mother, mysteriously impelled, seemed loath to let the interview be at an end, though she knew Harvey must soon be gone.
"You'd better hurry now, dear," she said when their own door was reached; "no, no, I can go in alone all right—on with you to the party, Harvey; they can't any of them be happier than I am to-night. And tell Madeline, for me, there's only one chick like mine in the world—and whoever gets——"
The remainder of the message was lost in laughing protest as the good-byes were said; the mother stole softly in to her patient guest, her son hurrying on to the gathering revelry.
XXV
WHAT MADE THE BALL SO FINE?