"Enough? Perhaps; I don't know, mother. I don't seem to know how much is due her from me. She's never had anything from me so far—anything worth having—"
"Don't be a fool, Clive."
He said, absently: "It's too late for such advice!
I am a fool. And I don't quite understand how not to be one."
His mother, rather fearful of arousing in him any genuine emotion, discreetly kissed him good night.
"You're a slightly romantic boy," she said. "There is nothing else the matter with you."
They mounted the velvet-covered stairway together, her arm around his neck, his encircling a slender, pliant waist that a girl of sixteen might have envied. Her maid followed with furs and hood.
"Come into my bedroom and smoke, Clive," she smiled. "We can talk through the dressing-room door."
"No; I think I'll turn in."
The maid continued on through the rose and ivory bedroom and into the dressing-room. Mrs. Bailey lingered, intuition and experience preparing her for what a boy of that age was very sure to say.