Page:Small Souls (1919).djvu/345

Rh grey, curled tenderly about the delicate oval of her still youthful face. There was a sort of gentle, resigned peace in her attitude, with much pensiveness and sadness. When Addie opened the door, he stood still and she did not look up, thinking that it was Van der Welcke. Then he went to his mother. . ..

She looked up, startled:

“Is that you?”

“Yes, Mamma.”

She looked up at him; and suddenly it flashed across her that he knew. . ..

“Papa has been speaking to me, Mamma. . . .”

She gave a violent start, as though she had had an electric shock; her eyes closed, her head fell back, her hands fell slackly in her lap:

“O God!” she thought. “No, oh, no, he ought not to have told him! . . .”

He knelt before his mother and passed his fingers softly over her face and gently opened her eyes. She looked at him, with a pale, terrified, shocked face and staring eyes and distorted mouth. She saw his own fresh, soft child’s face, smiling friendily. . ..

“I know the truth now, Mamma,” he said, “and, if people slander me now, I can bear it. . . .”

She threw her arms around him, dropped her head upon his breast. She felt him in that embrace grown older, bigger, stronger, now quite a man. She now felt a protector in him. But she was ashamed and again closed her eyes: