Page:Pierre and Jean - Clara Bell - 1902.djvu/38

Rh went up to the night. They were terrifying, these calls given forth by the great blind steamships. Then all was silent once more. Pierre had opened his eyes and was looking about him, startled to find himself here, roused from his nightmare. "I am mad," thought he; "I suspect my mother." And a surge of love and emotion, of repentance and prayer and grief, welled up in his heart. His mother! Knowing her as he knew her, how could he ever have suspected her? Was not the soul, was not the life of this simple-minded, chaste, and loyal woman clearer than water? Could any one who had seen and known her ever think of her but as above suspicion? And he, her son, had doubted her! Oh, if he could but have taken her in his arms at that moment, how he would have kissed and caressed her, and gone on his knees to crave pardon!

Then the doubts rise again. His father is vulgar and unsympathetic; the friend was refined and charming. Look at the case in every way, the worst might easily be true, with comparatively little blame to her.

She had loved him. Why not? She was his mother. What then? Must a man be blind and stupid to the point of rejecting evidence because it concerns his mother? But did she give herself