He grew cold all over, his eyelids narrowed; he felt brutal....
"What is it?" he asked hard.
"Mother wants you to come right down."
"I will come," he said.
Her footsteps departed.... He rose slowly, heavily, like the man who must now face the executioner.... He stuck his pocketbook back in his coat and picked up his valise. Mechanically he looked about the room. Then he unlocked and opened the door, shut off the gas, and went into the lighted hall.
And as he descended the steps he felt ever smaller before the growing terror of the world. Never had he been more of a child than at this moment: never had he longed more fiercely to sob and cry out and give over everything.... How had this guilt descended upon him? What had he done? Why was all this necessary? Who was forcing him through this strange and frightful experience? He went on, lower and lower....
The door of his mother's room was a little open. It was all as it had always been—the pin-point of light, the shading newspaper, the sick-room silence, the warm shadow.... He paused a second to summon up strength, to combat the monster of fear and guilt in his heart. He tried with all his little boyish might to smooth out his face, to set it straight and firm. He pushed the door, set down the valise, entered: pale, large-eyed, looking hard and desperate.
He did not see his sister at all, though she sat under the light. His mother he hardly saw: had the sense of a towel binding her head, and the dim form under the bedclothes. He stepped clumsily—he was trembling so—to the foot of her bed, and grasped the brass rail for support....
His mother's voice was low and thick; a terrible voice. Her throat was swollen, and she could speak only with difficulty. The voice accused him. It said plainly: "It was you did this."
She said: "Paul, this has got to end."