She held the cup out, covering her nose with her handkerchief.

George took the cup, and like a cat spying a mouse, Mrs. Pendyce watched him take it out into the garden.  As the door closed, quicker, more noiseless than a cat, she slipped behind the curtains.

‘I know he has a pistol,’ she thought.

She was back in an instant, gliding round the room, hunting with her eyes and hands, but she saw nothing, and her heart lightened, for she was terrified of all such things.

‘It’s only these terrible first hours,’ she thought.

When George came back she was standing where he had left her.  They sat down in silence, and in that silence, the longest of her life, she seemed to feel all that was in his heart, all the blackness and bitter aching, the rage of defeat and starved possession, the lost delight, the sensation of ashes and disgust; and yet her heart was full enough already of relief and shame, compassion, jealousy, love, and deep longing.  Only twice was the silence broken.  Once when he asked her whether she had lunched, and she who had eaten nothing all day answered: 

“Yes, dear—­yes.”

Once when he said: 

“You shouldn’t have come here, Mother; I’m a bit out of sorts!”

She watched his face, dearest to her in all the world, bent towards the floor, and she so yearned to hold it to her breast that, since she dared not, the tears stole up, and silently rolled down her cheeks.  The stillness in that room, chosen for remoteness, was like the stillness of a tomb, and, as in a tomb, there was no outlook on the world, for the glass of the skylight was opaque.

That deathly stillness settled round her heart; her eyes fixed themselves on the skylight, as though beseeching it to break and let in sound.  A cat, making a pilgrimage from roof to roof, the four dark moving spots of its paws, the faint blur of its body, was all she saw.  And suddenly, unable to bear it any longer, she cried: 

“Oh, George, speak to me!  Don’t put me away from you like this!”

George answered: 

“What do you want me to say, Mother?”

“Nothing—­only——­”

And falling on her knees beside her son, she pulled his head down against her breast, and stayed rocking herself to and fro, silently shifting closer till she could feel his head lie comfortably; so, she had his face against her heart, and she could not bear to let it go.  Her knees hurt her on the boarded floor, her back and all her body ached; but not for worlds would she relax an inch, believing that she could comfort him with her pain, and her tears fell on his neck.  When at last he drew his face away she sank down on the floor, and could not rise, but her fingers felt that the bosom of her dress was wet.  He said hoarsely: 

“It’s all right, Mother; you needn’t worry!”

For no reward would she have looked at him just then, but with a deeper certainty than reason she knew that he was safe.