moon.  But however the night might be, this strange, dangerous son of hers was a match for it.  She looked gloatingly after him as he passed out of her sight, and then turned and went into the kitchen.  It was easy to prepare him a meal, for there was a gas-stove and the stores lay at her hand, each in its own place, since in her five minutes’ visit to the cook every morning she imposed the same nervous neatness here and kept the rest of the house rectangular and black and white.

She heard the closing of the front door and his steps coming in search of her.  She liked to think of him finding his way to her by the rays of light warmer than moonlight through half-open doors.  If it had been anyone else in the world that was coming towards her she would have gathered up her thick plaits and pinned them about her head.  But from him she need not hide the signs, which made all other people hate her, that she had been beautiful and had been destroyed.

When he came in she said, “Light the other gas-jets.  Yes, both of them.”

Now there was a lot of light.  She could see the bird’s-wing brilliance of his hair, the faint bluish bloom about his lips, that showed he had not shaved since morning, the radiance of his eyes and the flush on his cheeks that had come of his enjoyed ride through the cold moony air.  The queer things men were, with their useless, inordinate, disgusting yet somehow magnificent growth of hair on their faces, and their capacity for excitements that have nothing to do with emotion....

He came and stood beside her and slipped his arm round her waist and murmured, “Well, Marion?” and laughed.  Always he had loved calling her that, ever since as a little boy he had found her full name written in an old book and had run to her, crying, “Is that really your lovely name?” Even more than by the name itself had he been pleased by the way it was written, squintwise across the page and in a round hand, exactly as he himself was then writing his own name in his first school books.  It made him see his mother as a little girl, and helped him to dream his favourite dream that he and she were just the same age and could go to school and play games together.  It still gave him an inexplicable glow of pleasure, the memory of that brownish signature staggering across the flyleaf of “Jessica’s First Prayer.”

She perceived that he was violently excited at coming back to her, but she took the toast from under the grill, buttered it, set it on the warm plate, and poured the eggs on it with an ironical air of absorption.  These two went very carefully and mocked each other perpetually so that the gods should not overhear and be jealous.  “Now, eat it while it’s hot!” she said, holding out the plate.

He put it down on the kitchen table and gathered her into his arms.

“Well, mother?” he murmured, looking down at her, worshipping her.

“Oh, my boy,” she whispered, “you’ve lost your brown, up there in Scotland.”