Mrs. Doran's town automobile was waiting with a solemn chauffeur and footman who bent their eyes reverently, not to look the stricken young soldier in the face. Max had a sick thrill as he saw the smart blue monster, with its row of glittering glass eyes; it had been his Christmas present to his mother by request. When the telegram told him briefly that she had been hurt in a motor accident, he had thought with agony that it might have been in the car he had given. He was thankful that it had not been so. That would have seemed too horrible—as if he had killed her. Now he would hear how it had really happened. Every nerve was tense as if he were awaiting an operation without anesthetics.
There were not many blocks to go from the Grand Central to the Fifth Avenue home of the Dorans, an old house which had been remodelled and made magnificent by Max's father to receive his bride. In less than ten minutes the blue automobile had slipped through all the traffic and reached its destination; but many questions can be asked and answered in eight minutes. Between the moment of starting, and the moment when Max's one hastily packed suitcase was being carried up to the door, he had heard the whole story. The fated car had been a friend's car. There had been a collision. The two automobiles had turned over. For half an hour she had lain crushed under the weight of the motor before she could be got out. Her back was broken, and she had been horribly burnt. Even if she could have lived—which was impossible—she would have been shockingly disfigured. Edwin Reeves had been with her once, for a few minutes: she had wanted to speak to him about certain things, matters of business, and the doctors, who never left her, had stopped giving her opiates on purpose. From the first she had said that she must be kept alive till Max could come, and that no matter what she had to suffer her mind must be clear for a talk with him. After that, nothing mattered. She wanted to die and be out of her misery. When Mr. Reeves had been taken into her room her face had been covered with a white veil, and Max must prepare himself to be received in the same way. It was better that he should know this beforehand and be spared a shock.
Never to see that beautiful face again in this world! Max felt like one dead and galvanized as he walked into the house and was received by a doctor—some great specialist whose name he had heard, but whom he had never chanced to meet. Not once did his thoughts rush back to Billie Brookton, and the night when he had meant to put on her finger the blue diamond in the platinum ring. Billie was in another world, a world a million miles away, as following the doctor Max walked softly into his mother's room.
There he had once more that insistent feeling of unreality. The gay room with its shell-pink melting into yellow and orange looked so unsuited to any condition but joy that it was impossible to believe tragedy had stalked in uninvited. Even with the morning light shut out by the drawn yellow curtains, and the electricity turned on in the flower or gauze-shaded lamps, it looked a place dedicated to the joy of life and beauty. But when, with a physical effort, Max turned his eyes to the bed, copied from one where Marie Antoinette had slept, he saw that which seemed to throw a pall of crape over the fantastic golden harmonies. A figure lay there, very straight, very flat and long under the coverlet pulled high over the breast. Even the hands were hidden: and over the face was spread a white veil of chiffon, folded double, so that no gleam of eye, no feature could even be guessed at.
Until that moment, Max had kept his self-control. But at sight of that piteous form, and remembering the radiant face framed with great bunches of red-gold hair, which he had kissed good-bye, in this very bed not three months ago, the dam which had held back the flood of anguish broke. It was as if his heart had turned to water. Tears sprang from his eyes, and the strength went out of his knees. It was all he could do not to fall at the side of the bed and to sob out his mother's name, telling her that he would give his life a hundred times for hers if that could be, or that he would go out of the world with her rather than she should go alone. But something came to his help and kept him outwardly calm save for a slight choking in the throat as he said softly, standing by the bedside, "Dearest, I am here."
"At last," came a faint murmur from under the double veil.
Max thought, with a sharp stab of pain, that he would not have recognized the voice if he had not known that it was his mother's. It sounded like the voice of a little, frail, very old woman; whereas Rose Doran had been a creature of glorious physique, looking and feeling at least fifteen years younger than her age.
"I started the minute I had the telegram," Max said, wanting to make sure that she realized his love, his frantic haste to reach her. "It has seemed a hundred years! Darling, if I could bear this for you. If——"
"Please, don't," the little whining voice under the veil fretfully cut him short. "I can't see very well. Has the doctor gone out?"
"Yes, dearest. We're alone."
"I'm glad. There isn't much time, and I've got a story to tell you. I ought to call it a confession."
That swept Max's forced calmness away. "A confession from you to me!" he cried out, horrified. "Never! Darling One, whatever it is I don't want to hear it—I don't need to hear it, I know—— Rest. Be at peace. Just let us love each other."
"You don't know what you are talking about." The veiled voice grew shrill. "You only do harm trying to stop me. You'll kill me if you do."
"Forgive me, dear." Max controlled himself again. "I'll not say another word. I——"
"Then don't—don't! I want to go on—to the end. I'd rather you sat down. I can see you standing there. It's like a black shadow between me and the light, accusing—no, don't speak! It needn't accuse. You wouldn't have had the life you've had, if—but I mustn't begin like that. Where are you now? Are you near enough to hear all I say? I can't raise my voice."
"I'm sitting down, close by the bed. I can hear the least whisper," Max assured her. He sat with his head bowed, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. This seemed unbearable, to spend the last minutes of her life hearing some confession! It was not right, from a mother to a son. But he must yield.
"I don't know how long I can stand it—the pain, I mean," she moaned. "So I can't try and break things gently to you, for fear—I have to stop in the midst. I'm not your mother, Max, and Jack wasn't your father. But he thought he was. He never knew. And he loved you. I didn't. I never could. You see—I did know. You must have wondered sometimes. I saw you wondered; I suppose you never guessed, even though I always told you to call me Rose, or anything you liked, except mother?"
She was waiting for him to answer; and he did answer, though it was as if she had thrown him over a precipice, and he were hanging by some branch which would let him crash down in an instant to the bottom of an unknown abyss.
"No, I never guessed." Queer how quiet, how utterly expressionless his voice was! He heard it in faraway surprise.
"I used to be afraid at first that Jack would guess, you were so unlike either of us, so dark, so—so Latin. But he said you were a throw-back to his Celtic ancestors. There were French and Irish ones hundreds of years ago, you know. He never suspected. Everything happened just as I hoped it would—just as I wanted it to. But I didn't realize how I should feel about it if I were going to die. The minute I came to myself after—the accident, it rushed over me. Not the very first thought. That was about myself. I wanted to know if my looks were gone. When they had to say yes, I was glad—thankful—I could die. I'd have poisoned or starved myself rather than live on. But no need of that. I think I could let myself slip away any minute now. I'm just—holding on. For something told me—I have a feeling that Jack himself came, and has been here ever since, knowing all I had done