Page:Small Souls (1919).djvu/97

Rh “Grateful?” he echoed. “You’ve never been that. Not to them nor to me. . . .”

She clenched her fists:

“Again!” she screamed. “Always again and again! Nothing but reproaches for ruining your career, for. . . for. . .”

She sobbed aloud.

“Mamma!” said Addie.

The boy was between them. He was everything to both of them. He never understood the cause of those quarrels, the ground of those reproaches: and, until now, he had never reflected how strange it was that his father’s relations and his mother’s were always so far away, so inaccessible. But he did not ask, even if he did not understand; and yet, though he did not understand this particular thing, he was no longer a child. He was a little man by now; and his heart was all the heavier because he did not know and did not understand. But he shouldered his burden like a hero.

She kissed the boy:

“Ah!” she wept. “You like him better than me, Addie: go to him, go to him!”

“Mamma,” he said, “I love you both the same. Don’t cry, Mamma; don’t be so quick, so impatient. . . .”

Van der Welcke drank his coffee.

She clasped the child to her, kissed him fiercely:

“I’m going out, Addie. You’re very good, but I’m going out: I want air.”

“Shall I go with you?”