later years he resorted to the bench opposite, and he relapsed upon it now, gazing at the fire, at his mother and at the fire again, while he considered her, disquietedly.
He did not betray disquiet, he thought; and, in fact, he might have revealed it more plainly without his mother noticing it; for it was an hour of hardly constrained emotions in herself when her son returned from the crude, inchoate conglomeration of people in the west who, to her mind, composed the city which claimed him from her.
"Tell me about Chicago, Calvin," she repeated, her voice calm as ever, but her breast suffused with a feeling of antagonism against the distant people and with a pulse of her momentary triumph over them at regaining him.
"It's a place which becomes more incredible the longer one lives there," Calvin replied. "I think I do not yet credit even its physical proportions, mother," he explained, smiling.
He glanced about the room which was becoming dark away from the fire; for dusk was fallen, and at the other end of the library was an open window which looked out upon the garden, not upon city lights, but which put Calvin in mind of the open window at which the Royle girl stood in the court-room at this hour a few days ago.
He stirred, patting his pocket to locate his tobacco, stooped into the heat of the flames and picked up a blazing splinter, with which he lighted a cigarette.
His mother watched, with swelling breast, the play of the flame upon the clear-cut, powerful planes of her son's face, and she glanced down his spare, strong body to his feet. "He has character and health," she thought, repeating to herself with pride, "character—and he's mine."
She let herself enjoy the even line of his profile, the brown luster of his hair which still curled just a little and was very thick, as it had been when he was a boy; and she longed to touch his forehead. His was a fine,
