The look in her eyes warmly welcomed him. Her
own sorrows made her sensitive to those of others, and as Carnac entered
she saw something was vexing him.
"Dear lad!" she said.
He was beside her now, and he kissed her cheek. "Best of all the world,"
he said; and he did not see that she shrank a little.
"Are you in trouble?" she asked, and her hand touched his shoulder.
The wrong she had done him long ago vexed her. It was not possible this
boy could fit in with a life where, in one sense, he did not belong. It
was not part of her sorrow that he had given himself to painting and
sculpture. In her soul she believed this might be best for him in the
end. She had a surreptitious, an almost anguished, joy in the thought
that he and John Grier could not hit it off. It seemed natural that
both men, ignorant of their own tragedy, believing themselves to be
father and son, should feel for each other the torture of distance,
a misunderstanding, which only she and one other human being understood.
John Grier was not the boy's father. Carnac was the son of Barode
Barouche.
After a moment he said: "Mother, I know why I've come to you. It's
because I feel when I'm in trouble, I get helped by being with you."
"How do I help, my boy?" she asked with a sad smile, for he had said
the thing dearest to her heart.
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