"Oh! damn!--damn!" And the expletive never varied in its spontaneity.
* * * * * As he walked under the primrose sky and breathed in the faint fragrant stir of the freshening morning air, he who had always felt joyously the sense of life knew more than ever before the keen rapture of living.

The springing lightness of his own step as it rang on the pavement was part of it.

It was as though he were still dancing and he almost felt something warm and light in his arm and saw a little head of dark silk near his breast.
Throughout his life he had taken all his joys to his closest companion and nearest intimate--his mother.

Theirs had not been a common life together.

He had not even tried to explain to himself the harmony and gaiety of their nearness in which there seemed no separation of years.
She had drawn and held him to the wonder of her charm and had been the fine flavour of his existence.