Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/164

 look she gave him. There was heartbreak in it; there was more than that, there was the crushing back of a life-long pride.

"What can it mean?" she asked.

His head fell on his breast He had never guessed before the bitterness that life can have, that a moment of time can bring. She never took her eyes from his. Whatever the sentence, she would meet it as became her past. Slowly his head came up; slowly the misery in his eyes rose to hers. Then he came and laid his lips on her forehead and said:

"You are my mother: I shall obey your wish."