Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/41

 Indeed he had only a hazy knowledge of what she meant and he blushed at his mother's mention of such "things." 

It was during the third year that the image of his mother began to grow a little blurred. At times the figure on the opposite side of the world seemed less awe-inspiring, less indomitable, less invincible. He wasn't a boy any longer. He had knowledge of life gained from the crude, primitive world about him, and of the intimations born of his own sufferings. It was impossible to exist unchanged amid such hardships, among black people who lived with the simplicity of animals and held obscene festivals dedicated to unmentionable gods of fertility.

He had come to Africa, one might have said, without a face—with only a soft, embryonic boyish countenance upon which life had left no mark; but now, at twenty-six, his features were hardened and sharpened—the straight, rather snub nose, the firm but sensual mouth, the blue eyes in which a flame seemed forever to be burning. The fevers left their mark. There were times when, dead with exhaustion, he had the look of a man of forty. Behind the burning eyes, there was forming slowly a restless, inquiring intelligence, blended oddly of a heritage from the shrewd woman who was always right and of the larky cleverness of a father he could not remember.

Naomi had noticed the change, wondering that he could have grown so old while she and Swanson remained unchanged. There were even little patches of gray at his temples—gray at twenty-six. For days