of the son. It began gently at first on the sensual red lips, and then spread itself until the effect was utterly disarming. He had a way of smiling thus, after a fashion that was disconcerting because its implications were so profound, so subtle, and so filled with disillusionment. It was a smile in which the gray eyes, lighting suddenly, played a tantalizing rôle—a smile which seemed to envelop its subject and, clinging there for a time, to destroy all power of deceit by its very friendliness. It said, gently and warmly, "Come now, let's be honest and generous with each other." The red lips curved ever so gently beneath the dark mustache. It was the smile of a man born knowing much that others seldom ever learn.
He smiled at her and said, "Ah! Who could have told you that? . . . Who but Sabine . . . who knows everything?"
The very tone of his voice appeared to caress and yet mock his mother. (Sabine . . . indeed all women.) Before such an assault even Thérèse Callendar had no resistance. Shifting her plump body so that the heavy bangles on her wrists jangled and clattered, she waited a moment before answering. Then a faint blush, which appeared to arise from a real sense of guilt, spread slowly up to the edges of her bright small eyes.
"It was Sabine who told me," she said. "You can't blame her for that."
"No . . . she always knows everything." He laughed abruptly. "Sometimes I think she must be in communication with the birds . . . or the mice."
"You know what I think . . . I think that it's time you married. It's a responsibility . . . the money. . . . There ought to be heirs. We can't give all that money to charity or some drafty museum." While she knocked off the ashes from her cigarette, he watched her silently with the same caressing, mocking smile. "You're past twenty-five, you know. . . . I want my grandchildren to be the children of young parents. I believe in it."
Then suddenly, he pierced straight into the thing which she
