She let her breath out all at once and colour flooded her face.

"Yes," she told him. "Yes, yes."

Neither of them said anything more about it.

It was that same day, toward evening, that Christopher broke one of his
long silences, reverting to a subject always near to them both.

"Mother, you've never told me where it is--on the _map_, I mean."

She was looking the other way. She did not turn around.

"I--Chris--I--I haven't a map in the house."

He did not press the matter. He went out into the back yard presently,
under the grape-trellis, and there he stood still for a long time,
staring at nothing particular.

He was growing up.

He went away to boarding-school not long after this, taking with him the
picture of his adored mother, the treasured epic of his dark, strong
fathers, his narrow shoulders, his rare, blind bursts of passion, his
newborn wonder, and his violin. At school they thought him a queer one.

The destinies of men are unaccountable things. Five children in the
village of Deer Bay came down with diphtheria. That was why the academy
shut up for a week, and that was what started Christopher on his way
home for an unexpected holiday. And then it was only by one chance in a