The blow falls -- another--and another.

Surely the mother hears that cry--'O Robert! pity! pity!' Poor grey-haired woman! Was it for this you suffered a mother's pangs in your lone widowhood five-and-thirty years ago?
Was it for this you kept the little worn morocco shoes Janet had first run in, and kissed them day by day when she was away from you, a tall girl at school?
Was it for this you looked proudly at her when she came back to you in her rich pale beauty, like a tall white arum that has just unfolded its grand pure curves to the sun?
The mother lies sleepless and praying in her lonely house, weeping the difficult tears of age, because she dreads this may be a cruel night for her child.
She too has a picture over her mantelpiece, drawn in chalk by Janet long years ago.

She looked at it before she went to bed.

It is a head bowed beneath a cross, and wearing a crown of thorns..