Perhaps what her son had faced in France accounted for the change in him;––for it was being said that no man could come back from such scenes unchanged;––none could ever again be the same. And it was being said, too, that old beliefs and ideals had altered; that everything familiar was ending;––and that the former things had already passed away under the glimmering dawn of a new heaven and a new earth.
Perhaps all this was so––though she doubted it. Perhaps this son she had borne in agony might become to her somebody less familiar than the baby she had nursed at her own breast.
But so far, to her, he continued to remain the same familiar baby she had always known––the same and utterly vital part of her soul and body. No sudden fulfilment of an apocalypse had yet wrought any occult metamorphosis in this boy of hers.
And if he now seemed changed it was from that simple and familiar cause instinctively understood by mothers,––trouble!––the most ancient plague of all and the only malady which none escapes.
She was a rather startlingly pretty woman, with the delicate features and colour and the snow-white hair of an 18th century belle. She stood, now, drawing on her gloves and watching her son out of dark-fringed deep blue eyes, until he glanced around uneasily. Then he rose at once, looking at her with fire-dazzled eyes.
“Don’t rise, dear,” she said; “the car is here and your father is fussing and fuming in the drawing-room, and I’ve got to run.... Have you any plans for the evening?”
“None, mother.”
“You’re dining at home?”
“Yes.”