you see that I'm pretty nearly dead-beat?" he burst out uncontrollably; and
as she stood silent, he added with a weary fall in his voice, "I think I'll
go upstairs and see if I can't get a nap before dinner."

* * * * *

Though they had separated upon the assurance that she should see the two
designs if she wished it, Mrs. Peyton knew they would not be shown to her.
Dick, indeed, would not again deny her request; but had he not reckoned on
the improbability of her renewing it? All night she lay confronted by that
question. The situation shaped itself before her with that hallucinating
distinctness which belongs to the midnight vision. She knew now why Dick
had suddenly reminded her of his father: had she not once before seen the
same thought moving behind the same eyes? She was sure it had occurred to
Dick to use Darrow's drawings. As she lay awake in the darkness she could
hear him, long after midnight, pacing the floor overhead: she held her
breath, listening to the recurring beat of his foot, which seemed that of
an imprisoned spirit revolving wearily in the cage of the same thought. She
felt in every fibre that a crisis in her son's life had been reached, that
the act now before him would have a determining effect on his whole future.
The circumstances of her past had raised to clairvoyance her natural
insight into human motive, had made of her a moral barometer responding to
the faintest fluctuations of atmosphere, and years of anxious meditation
had familiarized her with the form which her son's temptations were likely
to take. The peculiar misery of her situation was that she could not,
except indirectly, put this intuition, this foresight, at his service.
It was a part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real
counsellor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not
become a part of the moral tissues. Love such as hers had a great office,
the office of preparation and direction; but it must know how to hold its