What then?
Must a man be blind and stupid to the point of rejecting evidence because it concerns his mother?
But did she give herself to him?
Why yes, since this man had had no other love, since he had remained faithful to her when she was far away and growing old.

Why yes, since he had left all his fortune to his son--their son! And Pierre started to his feet, quivering with such rage that he longed to kill some one.

With his arm outstretched, his hand wide open, he wanted to hit, to bruise, to smash, to strangle! Whom?
Every one; his father, his brother, the dead man, his mother! He hurried off homeward.

What was he going to do?
As he passed a turret close to the signal mast the strident howl of the fog-horn went off in his very face.

He was so startled that he nearly fell and shrank back as far as the granite parapet.