“Mother,” he exclaimed, “what does thee know of this world, thee who has passed thy life in lonely places and amongst a quiet people?”

She rose and paced the floor as if to permit some of her excitement to escape in physical activity, and pausing before him, said:  “My only and well-beloved son, thee does not know thy mother.  A veil has been drawn over that portion of her life which preceded thy birth, and its secrets are hidden in her own heart.  She has prayed God that she might never have to bring them forth into the light; but he has imposed upon her the necessity of opening the grave in which they are buried, in order that, seeing them, thee may abandon thy desires to taste those pleasures which once lured thy mother along the flower-strewn pathway to her sin and sorrow.”

Her solemnity and her suffering produced in the bosom of her son a nameless fear.  He could not speak.  He could only look and listen.

“Thee sees before thee,” she continued, “the faded form and features of a woman once young and beautiful.  Can thee believe it?”

He did not answer, for she had seemed to him as mothers always do to children, to have been always what he had found her upon awakening to consciousness.  He could not remember when her hair was not gray.

Something in her manner revealed to the startled soul of the young Quaker that he was about to come upon a discovery that would shake the very foundation of his life; for a moment he could not speak.

The silence in which she awaited the answer to her question became profound and in it the ticking of the old clock sounded like the blows of a blacksmith’s hammer, the purring of the cat like the roar of machinery, and the beating of his heart like the dull thud of a battering ram.

As if reading his inmost thoughts, the white-faced woman said:  “And so thee thought that I was always old and gray?”

As she uttered these words in a tone of indescribable sadness, a faint smile played around the corners of her mouth—­such a marble smile as might have appeared upon the face of Niobe.  In an instant more it had composed itself into its former sadness, as a sheet of pure water resumes its calmness, after having been lightly stirred by a summer wind.

So long did she stand regarding him with looks of unutterable love that he could not endure the strain of the withheld secret, but exclaimed hoarsely:  “Go on!  Mother, for God’s sake, go on!  If thee has something to disclose, reveal it at once!”

It seemed impossible for her to speak.  The opening of the secrets of her heart to God before the bar of judgment could have cost her no greater effort than this confession to her son.

“David,” she said, in a voice that sounded like an echo of a long-dead past, “the fear that the sins of thy parents should be visited upon thee has tormented every hour of my life.  I have watched thee and prayed for thee as no one but a mother who has drunk the bitter cup to its dregs could ever do.  I have trembled at every childish sin.  In every little fault I have beheld a miniature of the vices of thy mother and thy father—­thy father!  Oh!  David, my son—­my son!”