Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/110

 be, and sometimes it was nothing but I knew that he liked to hurt  and it was the expectation.”

In that white room, now flaming with the fires of the setting sun, Peter caught his mother to his breast and held her there and her white hands clutched his knees.

Then his eyes softened and he turned to her and arranged her head on the pillow and drew the sheets closely about her.

“I must go now. It has been bad for you this talking, but it had to be. I'm never, never going to leave you again—you shall not be alone any more—”

"Oh, Peter! I'm so happy! I have never been so happy but it all comes of being a coward. If I had only been brave—never be afraid of anybody or anything.  Promise me, Peter—”

“Except of myself,” he answered, kissing her.

“Kiss me again.”

“And again ”

“To-morrow “ he looked back at her, smiling. He saw her, for an instant, as he left the room, with her cheek against the pillow and her black hair like a cloud about her; the twilight was already in the room.

An hour later, as he stood in the dining-room, the door opened and his father came in.

“You have been with your mother?”

“Yes.”

“You have done her much harm. She is dying.”

“I know everything,” Peter answered, looking him in the face.

He would never, until his own end had come, forget that evening. The golden sunset gave place to a cold and windy night, and the dark clouds rolled up along the grey sky, hiding and then revealing the thin and pallid moon.

Peter stayed there in the dining-room, waiting. His grandfather slept in his chair. Once his aunt came crying into the room and wandered aimlessly about.

"Aunt, how is she?”

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! Whatever shall I do? She is going she is going I can do nothing! ”

Her thin body in the dusk flitted like a ghost about the