“Making me think evil of my poor mummie too!” Roger sobbed on.  “I thought the reason she didn’t come to my meeting this evening was that she was ashamed to see her son professing Jesus.  I thought hardly of her for not bringing you two along as she promised, because I didn’t see you weren’t there, and I preached on the sin of impurity specially for you, and it was a real sacrifice for me to do it, because the officers thought it was a forward subject for me to choose, and it my first service here.  I had to wrestle to forgive her for it.”

It was growing clearer in Ellen’s mind, this picture which would tell her why she must not allow Richard to abandon himself to his grief, to his passion.

“But, of course, I see it all now.  Oh, my darling, darling mummie!  I suppose you two wouldn’t come to my meeting because you wanted to stay here and play your tricks, and she saw through you and wouldn’t leave you alone in the house.  To think I blamed my mummie!”

Now she saw the picture.  It was her own mother, her own old mother, shuffling about the kitchen in Hume Park Square in the dirty light of the unwarmed morning; poking forward into the grate with hands on which housework had acted like a skin disease; pulling her flannel dressing-gown about a body which poverty and neglect had made as ugly as the time, the place, the task.  She was too tired to see it vividly, but she understood the message.  That was what happened to women who allowed themselves to be disregarded; who allowed any other than themselves to dwell in their men’s attention.

“Richard!  Richard!” She beat on his shoulder to make him listen.  “Hark what your brother’s saying of us!”

He stirred.  He sat up.

“He says we’re bad.”

He turned round and looked down on Roger.  At the sight of his face, though it was still, Ellen wished she had not roused him.

“It’s no use you looking at me like that,” said Roger tearfully but resolutely.  “I’m as good as you.  In fact, I’m better now that I’ve got Jesus.  And I tell you straight, you’ve killed my mummie with your beastly lust.  Mind you,” he cried, in a tone of whistling exaltation inappropriate to his words, “I’m not pretending I’m without sin myself.  I did evil once with a woman at Blackburn, but I saw the filthiness of my ways.  Old man, I do understand your temptations!”

What was Richard’s hand searching for on the breakfast table?  She bent forward to see, so that she might give it to him.

Richard had found what he wanted.  His fingers tightened on the handle of the breadknife.

“Let’s put an end to this,” he said.

He drove the knife into Roger’s heart.

“Mummie!” breathed Roger.  Meekly, but with no sign that he had any other quarrel with the proceedings save that they were peremptory, he sank down on the chair beside him and fell forward, his head lying untidily among the tea-cups.  This, no doubt, was the disorder which Marion had always foreseen; to prevent which she had practised her insane tidiness.