“Yes.”
Her head slowly drooped. She sat gazing in silence at the straw-littered floor.
He looked earnestly, anxiously at his mother’s face. Her brooding expression remained tranquil but inscrutable.
He said, watching her intently:
“I wasn’t sure about myself until last night. I don’t know about Dulcie, whether she can care for me—in this new way.... We were friends. But I am in love with her now.... Deeply.”
It was one of the moments in his career which remain fixed forever in a young man’s memory.
In a mother’s memory, too. Whatever she says and does then, he never forgets. She, too, remembers always.
He stood leaning over her in the dim light of the kennel, one arm around her shoulders, waiting. And presently she lifted her head, looked him quietly in the eyes, bent forward very gently, and kissed him.
Dulcie was not in the house, nor was Thessalie.