“He is asleep,” I answered mechanically.  In a moment my thoughts had flown back to the day my mother-in-law and I had met Harry Underwood in trip Aquarium, and she had discovered he was Lillian Gale’s husband.

What was it Dicky’s mother had said that day in the Aquarium rest room?

“I have a duty to you to perform,” she had declared, “a very painful duty, which involves the reviving of an old controversy with my son.  I beg that you will not try to find out anything concerning its nature.  It is better far that you do not.”

She had wished to go home at once and talk to Dicky.  I had persuaded her to go first to Fraunces’s Tavern for luncheon.  There she had been taken ill, and in the days that had intervened between that time and the moment I leaned over her bedside she and we around her had been fighting for her life.  There had been no opportunity for a confidential talk between mother and son.  And I was determined that there should be none yet.

In the first place, she was in no condition to discuss any subject, let alone one fraught with so many possibilities of excitement.  In the second place, I was determined that no one should discuss that old secret with my husband before I had a chance to talk to him concerning it.

“Well, you needn’t go to sleep just because Richard is.”

My mother-in-law’s impatient voice brought me back to myself.  I apologized eagerly.

I have never seen any one enjoy food as my mother-in-law did the simple meal I had prepared for her.  She ate every crumb, drank the wine, and drained the pot of tea before she spoke.

“How good that tasted!” she said gratefully as she finished, sinking back against my shoulder.  I had not only propped her up with pillows, but had sat behind her as she ate, that she might have the support of my body.

“I think I can take a long nap now,” she went on.  “When I awake send Richard to me.”

I laid her down gently, arranged her pillows, and drew up the covers over her shoulders.  She caught my hand and pressed it.

“My own daughter could not have been kinder to me than you have been,” she said.

“I am glad to have pleased you, Mrs. Graham,” I returned.  I suppose my reply sounded stiff, but I could not forget the day she came to us, and her contemptuous rejection of Dicky’s proposal that I should call her “Mother.”

She frowned slightly.  “Forget what I said that day I came,” she said quickly.  “Call me Mother, that is, if you can.”

For a moment I hesitated.  The memory of her prejudice against me would not down.  Then I had an illuminative look into the narrowness of my own soul.  The sight did not please me.  With a sudden resolve I bent down and kissed the cheek of my husband’s mother.

“Of course, Mother,” I said quietly.

It must have been two hours at least that I sat watching the sick woman.  She left her hand in mine a long time, then, with a drowsy smile, she drew it away, turned over with her face to the wall, and fell into a restful sleep.  I listened to her soft, regular breathing until the sunlight faded and the room darkened.