His father, removing his spectacles, delivered himself of an opinion concerning mysticism, and betrayed an illogical tendency to drift toward the Concord School of Philosophy.  However, there seemed to be insufficient incentive; he glanced coldly toward Cameron and resumed Herbert Spencer and his spectacles.

“Mother, don’t you want to stroll on the lawn a bit?” he asked presently.  “It looks very inviting to a city man’s pavement-worn feet.”

She drew her light wool shawl around her shoulders and took her tall son’s arm.

For a long while they strolled in silence, passed idly through the garden where masses of peonies hung over the paths, and pansies, iris, and forget-me-nots made the place fragrant.

It was not until they came to the plank bridge where the meadow rivulet, under its beds of cress and mint, threaded a shining way toward the woods, that his mother said in a troubled voice: 

“You are not happy, Louis.”

“Why, mother—­what an odd idea!”

“Am I mistaken?” she asked, timidly.

“Yes, indeed, you are.  I am very happy.”

“Then,” she said, “what is it that has changed you so?”

[Illustration:  “‘You are not happy, Louis.’”]

“Changed me?”

“Yes, dear.”

“I am not changed, mother.”

“Do you think a mother can be mistaken in her only son?  You are so subdued, so serious.  You are like men who have known sorrow....  What sorrow have you ever known, Louis?”

“None.  No great one, mother.  Perhaps, lately, I have developed—­recognised—­become aware of the sombre part of life—­become sensitive to it—­to unhappiness in others—­and have cared more—­”

“You speak like a man who has suffered.”

“But I haven’t, mother,” he insisted.  “Of course, every painter worries.  I did last winter—­last winter—­” He hesitated, conscious that last winter—­on the snowy threshold of the new year—­sorrow and pain and happiness and pity had, in an instant, assumed for him a significance totally new.

“Mother,” he said slowly, “if I have changed it is only in a better understanding of the world and those who live in it.  I have cared very little about people; I seem to have come to care more, lately.  What they did, what they thought, hoped, desired, endured, suffered, interested me little except as it concerned my work.  And somehow, since then, I am becoming interested in people for their own sakes.  It’s a—­new sensation.”

He smiled and laid his hand over hers: 

“Do you know I never even appreciated what a good man Alexander Cameron is until recently.  Why, mother, that man is one of the most generous, modest, kind, charitable, unselfish fellows in the world!”

“His behaviour is sometimes a little extraordinary,” said his mother—­“isn’t it?”

“Oh, that’s all on the surface!  He’s full of boyish spirits.  He dearly loves a joke—­but the greater part of that interminable funny business is merely to mask the modesty of a man whose particular perversity is a fear that people might discover how kind and how clever he really is!”