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 alienation. The terrific secret shared by Florence Gregory and her boy proved both. They never spoke of it. But, for that, it burdened and haunted them the more.

So far as she blamed him for his old fault his mother had quite forgiven Basil.

But he could not forgive her.

It cut her to the quick. But she could not blame Basil for it. And she sorrowed for him, more than she did for herself, that she was powerless to give him conviction of the good truth that her forgiveness was "perfect and entire, wanting nothing," her love unchanged.

And sometimes when the soul-poison scummed thickest in him, because of it, Basil Gregory loved his mother a little less. The high place to which sons in their souls set mothers carries a great price.

But this was not the worst between them. At times—and these were his blackest—Basil Gregory wondered if, at the absolute last, his mother would have failed him, would have refused to spare, at her supremest cost, the life she had given him. Would she at the last hideous resort have grudged him her all? Sometimes he thought that she would. And when he thought so he blamed her. And for that blame, his mother, who read his very soul, a little despised him, and she could not forgive it.

Wu Li Chang had wreaked a vengeance more terrible than he had planned. For when in a mother's soul there is something that she cannot forgive the son she has borne and nursed and still loves, human tragedy has reached its depth.