Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/314

304 Rebecca's postscript. "I'm ready for you, when you are ready to come."

"Thank heaven," he whispered, "I'm not the son of that brute who made my mother suffer."

He felt no bitterness toward Rebecca. His mother had left an indelible impression upon him, and the pitying protection he used to feel for her so strongly he now felt for Rebecca. Somehow he must protect Rebecca from all fear of himself. For she was afraid of him! It was clear enough now. She had probably been afraid of him ever since that first letter, which he had written her on the boat. Poor tormented girl! He understood now why her notes to him had been brief and impersonal. They had not cloaked an inarticulate love, as he had dimly hoped, but instead a fear, a dread, perhaps an actual aversion. Often he had seen his mother's high sense of duty triumph like this over fear and aversion. But he wanted nothing of that sort from Rebecca. No! No!

"Oh, I'll never come. You needn't be afraid. I'll never come back, Rebecca," he whispered, as if she were there beside him to hear.

A few days later a young ambulance-driver, just returned from France, chanced to dine at the Barton's. The young fellow's description of his experiences behind the firing-line was filled with flying shells and bursting bombs. He had brought back some relics and passed them round after dinner. As Nathan examined the heavy lump of jagged-edged shrapnel which Mrs. Barton, with a little shudder dropped into his palm as if glad to be rid of it, he wondered, turning the thing slowly over and over in his hand, if a bit of that stuff, sudden and quick in the head