The bursting of the dykes of convention between them was a horrible thing to them both.  Mr. Twist had none of the cruelty of the younger generation to support him:  he couldn’t shrug his shoulder and take comfort in the thought that this break between them was entirely his mother’s fault, for however much he believed it to be her fault the belief merely made him wretched; he had none of the pitiless black pleasure to be got from telling himself it served her right.  So naturally kind was he—­weak, soft, stupid, his mother shook out at him—­that through all his own shame at this naked vision of what had been carefully dressed up for years in dignified clothes of wisdom and affection, he was actually glad, when he had time in his room to think it over, glad she should be so passionately positive that he, and only he, was in the wrong.  It would save her from humiliation; and of the painful things of late Mr. Twist could least bear to see a human being humiliated.

That was, however, towards morning.  For hours raged, striding about his room, sorting out the fragments into which his life as a son had fallen, trying to fit them into some sort of a pattern, to see clear about the future.  Clearer.  Not clear.  He couldn’t hope for that yet.  The future seemed one confused lump.  All he could see really clear of it was that he was going, next day, and taking the twins.  He would take them to the other people they had a letter to, the people in California, and then turn his face back to Europe, to the real thing, to the greatness of life where death is.  Not an hour longer than he could help would he or they stay in that house.  He had told his mother he would go away, and she had said, “I hope never to see you again.”  Who would have thought she had so much of passion in her?  Who would have thought he had so much of it in him?

Fury against her injustice shook and shattered Mr. Twist.  Not so could fair and affectionate living together be conducted, on that basis of suspicion, distrust, jealousy.  Through his instinct, though not through his brain, shot the conviction that his mother was jealous of the twins,—­jealous of the youth of the twins, and of their prettiness, and goodness, and of the power, unknown to them, that these things gave them.  His brain was impervious to such a conviction, because it was an innocent brain, and the idea would never have entered it that a woman of his mother’s age, well over sixty, could be jealous in that way; but his instinct knew it.

The last thing his mother said as he left the drawing-room was, “You have killed me.  You have killed your own mother.  And just because of those girls.”

And Mr. Twist, shocked at this parting shot of unfairness, could find, search as he might, nothing to be said for his mother’s point of view.  It simply wasn’t true.  It simply was delusion.

Nor could she find anything to be said for his, but then she didn’t try to, it was so manifestly unforgivable.  All she could do, faced by this bitter sorrow, was to leave Edward to God.  Sternly, as he flung out of the room at last, unsoftened, untouchable, deaf to her even when she used the tone he had always obeyed the tone of authority, she said to herself she must leave her son to God.  God knew.  God would judge.  And Clark too would know; and Clark too would judge.