And in the long watches of that wakeful night, he formed the resolution that he put into effect at the first hint of dawn.  He would spend one entire day in solitude.  He would traverse step by step the primrose paths of his mother’s idyllic dream; he would visit every scene, every nook, she and her lover had immortalized in their memories; he would see it all, feel it all—­yes, live it all, and become so impregnated with its witchery that it would shed lustre and glory upon all the bleak years to come.  So well had she told her story, so perfect had been its word-painting, he was sure that he would recognize every scene.

He explored the ivy-terrace leading to his mother’s room, he walked up and down under the lime trees, and he sat on the bench still in position under the ivy hanging from the balustrade, and looked up wistfully at the windows of the rooms that had been hers.  Then he engaged a launch and crossed the lake, and was not satisfied until he had found among the young beeches on the other side what he felt must have been the exact spot where his mother had peeped through the leaves upon her ardent lover, before she knew him.  And he roamed about among the trees, feeling a subtle sense of satisfaction in being in the same places that they had been who gave him being, as though the spirits of their two natures must still haunt the spot and leave some trace of their presence even yet.  He followed each of the three paths until he had decided to his own satisfaction by which one his mother had escaped from her pursuer, that day, and he laughed a buoyant, boyish laugh at the image it suggested of Verdayne, the misogynist—­his stately, staid old Father Paul—­actually “running after a woman!” Truly the Boy was putting aside his own sorrow and discontent to-day.  He was living in the past, identifying himself with every phase of it, living in imagination the life of these two so dear to him, and rejoicing in their joy.  Life had certainly been one sweet song to them, for a brief space, a duet in Paradise, broken up—­alas for the Boy!—­before it had become the trio it should have developed into, by every law of Nature.

He sought the little village that they had visited before him, and lunched at the same little hotel.  He drove out to the little farmhouse where the lovers had had their first revelation of him—­their baby—­and he wept over the loss of the glorious mother she would have been to him.  He even climbed the mountain and looked with her eyes out over the landscape.  He was young and strong, and he determined to let nothing escape him—­to let no sense of fatigue deter him—­but to crowd the day full of memories of her.

The Boy, as his mother had been before him, was enraptured by all that he saw.  The beauty of the snow-capped mountains against the blue of the sky and the golden glamour of the sunshine appealed to him keenly, and he watched the reflection of it all in the crystal lake in a trance of delight.