With a cry of horror, he sprang forward;—­“Mother!  Mother!”

As he knelt there by the bed, when the first moments of their meeting were past, he turned his face toward the doctor.  From the physician his gaze went to the nurse, then back again to his mother’s old friend.  His eyes were burning with shame and sorrow—­with pain and doubt and accusation.  His low voice was tense with emotion, as he demanded, “What does this mean?  Why is my mother here like—­like this?”—­his eyes swept the bare room again.

The dying woman answered.  “I will explain, my boy.  It is to tell you, that I have waited.”

At a look from the doctor, the nurse quietly followed the physician from the room.

It was not long.  When she had finished, the false strength that had kept the woman alive until she had accomplished that which she conceived to be her last duty, failed quickly.

“You will—­promise—­you will?”

“Yes, mother, yes.”

“Your education—­your training—­your blood—­they—­are—­all—­that—­I can—­give you, my son.”

“O mother, mother! why did you not tell me before?  Why did I not know!” The cry was a protest—­an expression of bitterest shame and sorrow.

She smiled.  “It—­was—­all that I could do—­for you—­my son—­the only way—­I could—­help.  I do not—­regret the cost.  You will—­not forget?”

“Never, mother, never.”

“You promise—­to—­to regain that—­which—­your father—­”

Solemnly the answer came,—­in an agony of devotion and love,—­“I promise—­yes, mother, I promise.”

* * * * *

A month later, the young man was traveling, as fast as modern steam and steel could carry him, toward the western edge of the continent.

He was flying from the city of his birth, as from a place accursed.  He had set his face toward a new land—­determined to work out, there, his promise—­the promise that he did not, at the first, understand.

How he misunderstood,—­how he attempted to use his inheritance to carry out what he first thought was his mother’s wish,—­and how he came at last to understand, is the story that I have to tell.

Chapter II

The Woman with the Disfigured Face

The Golden State Limited, with two laboring engines, was climbing the desert side of San Gorgonio Pass.

Now San Gorgonio Pass—­as all men should know—­is one of the two eastern gateways to the beautiful heart of Southern California.  It is, therefore, the gateway to the scenes of my story.

As the heavy train zigzagged up the long, barren slope of the mountain, in its effort to lessen the heavy grade, the young man on the platform of the observation car could see, far to the east, the shimmering, sun-filled haze that lies, always, like a veil of mystery, over the vast reaches of the Colorado Desert.  Now and then, as the Express swung around the curves, he gained a view of the lonely, snow-piled peaks of the San Bernardinos; with old San Gorgonio, lifting above the pine-fringed ridges of the lower Galenas, shining, silvery white, against the blue.  Again, on the southern side of the pass, he saw San Jacinto’s crags and cliffs rising almost sheer from the right-of-way.