Now there was silence.... Then he spoke quietly, honestly, candidly. It was the only way. Why can't human beings be simple with one another, be sweetly reasonable? Isn't a little understanding worth more than pride and anger? To understand is to forgive. Surely any one must know that.
Starting to speak, he sat down on the chair beside the bed, still holding her hand....
"Mother, come let's talk to one another. You think perhaps I have stopped loving you. It isn't true. I love you deeply. All this is breaking my heart. But how can I help it? Can't you see that I am young, and my life all before me? The best of your life is behind you. You have lived, I haven't. You have tasted the sweet mysteries of love, the agonies of death and birth, the terrors of lonely struggle. And I must have these, too. I am hungry for them. I can't help myself. I am like a leaf in the wind, like a rain-drop in the storm.... How can you keep me here? If you compel me, I'll become a shadow, all twisted and broken. I won't be a man, but a helpless child. Perhaps I shall go out of my mind. And what good will that do you? You will suffer more if I stay, than if I go. Oh, understand me, mother, understand me!"
His mother began to cry. She spoke at first as she always spoke, and then more like a mother in a poem.
"Understand? What do you understand? You know nothing about life. Oh, I only wish you had children and your children turned against you! That's the only way that you will ever learn.... I worked for you so hard. I gave up everything for my children. And your father died, and I went on alone, a woman with a great burden.... What sort of life have I had? Sacrifice, toil, tears.... I skimped along. I wore the same dress year after year, for five, six years.... I hung over your sickbeds, I taught you at my knees. I have known the bitterness of child-bearing, and the bitter cry of children.... I have fought alone for my little ones.... And you, Paul! You who were the darling of my heart, my little man, you who said you would take your father's place and take care of me and of your sisters and brother! You who were to repay me for everything; to give me a future, to comfort my old age, the staff I leaned on, my comfort, my son! I was proud of you as you grew up: so proud to see your pride, and your ambition. I knew you would succeed, that you would have fame and power and wealth, and I should be the proudest mother in the world! This was my dream.... Now I see you a failure, one who cares for nothing but self-indulgence and pleasure, a rolling stone, a flitter from place to place, and I—I am an old woman, deserted, left alone to wither in bitterness.... I gave everything to you—and you—you give back despair, loneliness, anguish. I gave you life: you turn on me and destroy me for the gift.... Oh, mother-love! What man will understand it—the piercing anguish, the roots that clutch the deep heart?... I feel the chill of death creeping over me...."
The tears rolled down Paul's cheeks. He pressed her hand now with both of his.
"Oh, mother, but I do understand! I have understood always, I have tried so hard to help you. I have tried so hard to be a good son. But this is something greater than I. We are in the hands of God, mother, and it is the law that the young must leave the old. Why do parents expect the impossible of their children? Does not the Bible say, 'You must leave father and mother, and cleave to me'? Didn't you leave grandmother and grandpa, to go to your husband? Can't you remember when you were young, and your whole soul carried you away to your own life and your own future? Mother, let us part with understanding, let us part with love."
"But when are you going, Paul?"
"To-night."
His mother flung her arms about him desperately and clung to him....