But these reactions were swallowed up by the recurrent pulsations, the spasms of his vision.  He felt from day to day a growth of purpose, an accumulation of energy that would resistlessly spill into action, that would bear him along, whether or no.  But what should he do, and how?  He was unfitted, and did not think he cared, for settlement work.  He knew nothing and cared less for charity work.  Politics were an undiscovered world to him.  What he wanted passionately was to go and live among the toilers, get to know them, and be the means of arousing and training them.

But then there was the problem of his mother—­a woman of sixty-three.  Could he leave her alone?  It was preposterous to think of taking her with him.  Myra could a thousand times better go.  He must talk with his mother, he must thresh the matter out with her, he must not delay longer to clear the issue.  And yet he hesitated.  Would she be able to understand?  How could he communicate what was bursting in his breast?  She belonged to a past generation; how could she hear the far-off drums of the advance?

Up and down the Park he went early one evening in a chaos of excitement, and he had a sudden conviction that he could not put off the moment any longer.  He must go to his mother at once, he must tell all.  As he walked down the lamp-lit street, under all the starriness of a tranquil autumn night, he became alternately pale and flushed, his heart thumped hard against his ribs, he felt like a little boy going to his mother to confess a wrong.

He looked up; the shades of the second floor were illumined:  she was up there.  Doing what?  Sharply then he realized what a partial life she led, the decayed middle-class associates of the boarding-house, tired, brainless, and full of small talk, the lonesome evenings, the long days.  He became more agitated, and climbed the stoop, unlocked his way into the house, went up the dim, soft, red-cushioned stairs, past the milky gas-globe in the narrow hall, and knocked at her door.

“Come in!” she cried.

He swung the door wide and entered.  She was, as usual, sitting in the little rocker under the light and beside the bureau, between the bed and the window.  The neat, fragrant room seemed to be sleeping, but the clear-eyed, upright woman was very much awake.  She glanced up from her sewing and realized intuitively that at last the crisis had come.  His big, homely face was a bald advertisement of his boyish excitement.

She nodded, and murmured, “Well!”

He drew up a chair awkwardly, and sat opposite her, tilting back to accommodate his sprawling length.  Then he was at a loss.

“Well,” he muttered, trying to be careless, “how are you?”

“All right,” she said drily.

She could not help him, though her heart was beginning to pain in her side.

“I’ve been walking about the Park,” he began again, with an indifference that was full of leaks, “and thinking....”  He leaned forward and spoke suddenly:  “Say, mother, don’t you get tired of living in this place?”