"But we must bear it as well as we can, dear, and—who knows?—it may all be for the best some day."
Victor, resting on his elbow, had listened with mouth agape. The flaming light which had crimsoned his sky for five long years, sustaining him, inspiring him, had died out in an instant. For some moments he did not speak, and in the intervals of Janet's lamentations nothing was audible but the cry of some sea-gulls who had come up from the sea, where a storm was rising. Then he began to laugh. It was wild, unnatural laughter, beginning thick in his throat and ending with a scream.
"Lord, what a joke!" he cried. "What a damned funny joke!"
But at the next moment he broke into a stifling sob, and fell face down on to the pillow and soaked it with his tears.
Janet hung over him like a mother-bird over a broken nest, her wrinkled face working hard with many emotions—sorrow for her boy and even anger with Fenella.
"Aw, dear! aw, dear!" she moaned, "many a time I've wished I had been your real mother, dear; but never so much as now that I might have a right to comfort you."
At that word, though sadly spoken, Victor raised himself from his pillow, brushed his eyes fiercely and said, in a firm, decided voice,
"That's all right, mother. I've been a fool. But it shall never happen again—never!"