"
"That's like you, mother."
"Kesiah says that she has behaved very well. Didn't you say so, Kesiah?"
"Yes, Mr. Chamberlayne told me that she appeared perfectly indifferent
when he spoke to her. She even remarked, I believe, that she didn't see
that it concerned her."
"Well, she's spirit enough. Now stop talking, mother, I am going."
"God bless you, my darling boy--you have never failed me."
Instead of appeasing his conscience, the remark completed his descent
into the state of disenchantment he had been approaching for hours. The
shock of his mother's illness, coming after three days of marriage, had
been too much for his unstable equilibrium, and he felt smothered by
an oppression which, in some strange way, seemed closing upon him from
without. It was in the air--in the faded cretonne of the room, in
the grey flashes of the swallows from the eaves of the house, in the
leafless boughs etched delicately against the orange light of the
sky. Like most adventurers of the emotions, he was given to swift
despondencies as well as to vivid elations, and the tyranny of a mood
was usually as absolute as it was brief.
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