not told my mother, to save her from a needless sorrow that would be inflicted on her by her friends. They would all flock to her and pester her with their outcry of ‘How very extraordinary!’ I can hear them and see them now. I tell you, if a man steps out of the beaten track over there — if he attempts to order his own life, marry to please himself, or cut his coat after any pattern other than the ordinary conventional lines, — even the boys on the street will fling stones at him. Her patronizing friends would, at the very least, politely raise their eyebrows. She is proud and sensitive, and any fling at her sons is a blow to her.”

“But what — ”

“I say I couldn’t tell her. I tell you I have been drinking from the cup of