He drew the quick breath of sudden realisation, and for a long time they stood silent, looking into each other’s eyes. At last she spoke, deadly white:
“That woman I saw—who opened the door for me—was my mother.”
She had pierced to the truth. No subterfuge he could invent had power to veil it. He made a sad gesture of admission.
“Why did you hide it from me?” she asked.
“You had a beautiful ideal, my child, and it would have been a crime to tear it away.”
She held herself very erect—there was steel in the small body—and advanced a step or so towards him, her dark eyes fearless.
“You know what you gave me to understand when I saw her?”
“Yes, my child,” said Fortinbras.
“You also were an ideal.”
He smiled. “You loved me tenderly, but I was not in your calendar of saints, my dear.”