“That night,” I said, “I had had too many cocktails at Hopestill’s.”

“I’m not entirely satisfied with that, but we shall let it go. You will keep me company, help me with my little book in the twilight of my life? You will not go away from Boston?”

“But I have no intention of going away from Boston!” I cried.

She drew her game to a close and glancing up at the clock which indicated twenty minutes before eleven, she waved her hand toward the cabinet where I went to pour out her sherry. I noticed that her hand shook; she seemed to shrink as I watched and her hand, curled into a trembling, beseeching cup, was like a beggar’s, asking for alms. It was not the sherry that she reached out to seize, but it was myself. Putting the glass down beside the chess-board, she extended her old claw to me. “Agree!” she cried. “Agree never to leave me until I die!” She smiled, but the terror of death was in her yellow eyes and in her voice, and although I took the proffered hand and smiled back at her, my whole soul retreated from her in the appalled vision of her awful dependence, her hideous cowardice. “Agree!” she was crying.

“I agree,” I said, but my voice was unnatural and I could feel perspiration collecting on my upper lip.

“I thought you wouldn’t fail me. Poor Hope failed me but I dare say it was partly my fault. Lord, I must get to church! I wish you could hear our new Reverend Jackson, from New Jersey, oddly enough, but he preaches admirably. Good-by.” And she went from the room, her martial tread echoing with a decreasing resonance down the corridor until the diminuendo ceased with the opening and closing of the outer door. Ethel peered into the library to announce that Mac was ready.

On the way to Wolfburg, I was fretful, then scolded myself for my directionless discontent. My problem had been solved, and I could ask for nothing more. It was perhaps only the spring air that made me suddenly wanderlustig. Perhaps it was Nathan’s preparations to leave for Paris that inspired me with thoughts of leaving Boston. He had often told me that he had money enough to pay my passage. I envied him his mobility; my double servitude, that to my mother and to Miss Pride, lay heavy on me, and now, since our conversation in the library this morning, the die was cast. I could not, morally, disappear. Just before we reached the asylum, I regained control of myself, said I loved my mother and I loved Miss Pride and Boston and that nothing could ever shake me from my resolve to live the rest of my life exactly as I was living it now.