On the third day after Dick’s departure for the West she got up when she heard him coming in, and putting on her dressing gown and slippers, knocked at his door.

“Come in,” he called ungraciously.

She found him with his coat off, standing half defiantly with a glass of whisky and soda in his hand.  She went up to him and took it from him.

“We’ve had enough of that in the family, Wallie,” she said.  “And it’s a pretty poor resource in time of trouble.”

“I’ll have that back, if you don’t mind.”

“Nonsense,” she said briskly, and flung it, glass and all, out of the window.  She was rather impressive when she turned.

“I’ve been a fairly indulgent mother,” she said.  “I’ve let you alone, because it’s a Sayre trait to run away when they feel a pull on the bit.  But there’s a limit to my patience, and it is reached when my son drinks to forget a girl.”

He flushed and glowered at her in somber silence, but she moved about the room calmly, giving it a housekeeper’s critical inspection, and apparently unconscious of his anger.

“I don’t believe you ever cared for any one in all your life,” he said roughly.  “If you had, you would know.”

She was straightening a picture over the mantel, and she completed her work before she turned.

“I care for you.”

“That’s different.”

“Very well, then.  I cared for your father.  I cared terribly.  And he killed my love.”

She padded out of the room, her heavy square body in its blazing kimono a trifle rigid, but her face still and calm.  He remained staring at the door when she had closed it, and for some time after.  He knew what message for him had lain behind that emotionless speech of hers, not only understanding, but a warning.  She had cared terribly, and his father had killed that love.  He had drunk and played through his gay young life, and then he had died, and no one had greatly mourned him.

She had left the decanter on its stand, and he made a movement toward it.  Then, with a half smile, he picked it up and walked to the window with it.  He was still smiling, half boyishly, as he put out his light and got into bed.  It had occurred to him that the milkman’s flivver, driving in at the break of dawn, would encounter considerable glass.

By morning, after a bad night, he had made a sort of double-headed resolution, that he was through with booze, as he termed it, and that he would find out how he stood with Elizabeth.  But for a day or two no opportunity presented itself.  When he called there was always present some grave-faced sympathizing visitor, dark clad and low of voice, and over the drawing-room would hang the indescribable hush of a house in mourning.  It seemed to touch Elizabeth, too, making her remote and beyond earthly things.  He would go in, burning with impatience, hungry for the mere sight of her, fairly overcharged with emotion, only to face that strange new spirituality that made him ashamed of the fleshly urge in him.