Inwardly he had been resentful of this bedside conversation with his mother. She made little of him, he thought, while outsiders appreciated his success. He had said, “So big,” measuring a tiny space between thumb and forefinger in answer to her half-playful question, but he had not honestly meant it. He thought her ridiculously old-fashioned now in her viewpoint, and certainly unreasonable. But he would not quarrel with her.
“You wait, too, Mother,” he said now, smiling. “Some day your wayward son will be a real success. Wait till the millions roll in. Then we'll see.”
She lay down, turned her back deliberately upon him, pulled the covers up about her.
“Shall I turn out your light, Mother, and open the windows?”
“‘Meena’ll do it. She always does. Just call her. . .Good-night.”
He knew that he had come to be a rather big man in his world. Influence had helped. He knew that, too. But he shut his mind to much of Paula’s manœvring and wire pulling—refused to acknowledge that her lean, dark, eager fingers had manipulated the mechanism that ordered his career. Paula herself was wise enough to know that to hold him she must not let him feel indebted to her. She knew that the debtor hates his creditor, She lay awake at night planning for him, scheming for his advancement, then suggested these schemes to him so deftly as to make him think he himself had devised them. She had even realized
