She lay back on her pillow and her voice came again nearer to her son.
"If your conscience bids you go, why did you not go at once instead of coming in here?"
"Because I promised. And you threatened to leave me if I went back to that house. I swore…" he said with infinite sadness. And he longed to cry out, "Mother, force me to keep my oath!" but the words would not come. And then she spoke again:
"Then go: do whatever your conscience bids you."
"Do not be anxious," he said, coming close up to the bed; and he stood there motionless for a few minutes and both were silent. He had a confused impression that he was standing before an altar with his mother lying upon it like some mysterious idol, and he remembered how, when he was a boy in the Seminary, he was always obliged to go and kiss her hand after he had been to confession. And something of the same repugnance and the same exaltation moved him now. He felt that if he had been alone, without her, he would have gone back
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