Then
her eyes kindled, and the colour came creeping back into her pale
cheeks. She rose suddenly. She was trembling.
"Andre-Louis!" she exclaimed.
CHAPTER XIV
THE BARRIER
That gift of laughter of his seemed utterly extinguished. For once
there was no gleam of humour in those dark eyes, as they continued
to consider her with that queer stare of scrutiny. And yet, though
his gaze was sombre, his thoughts were not. With his cruelly true
mental vision which pierced through shams, and his capacity for
detached observation - which properly applied might have carried him
very far, indeed - he perceived the grotesqueness, the artificiality
of the emotion which in that moment he experienced, but by which he
refused to be possessed. It sprang entirely from the consciousness
that she was his mother; as if, all things considered, the more or
less accidental fact that she had brought him into the world could
establish between them any real bond at this time of day! The
motherhood that bears and forsakes is less than animal.
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