She was
still in the romantic stage of kingship! And then the stolidly
common-sense Puritan ancestress in her made her laugh. It was hard for
her to disbelieve a romantic and perilous tale. But these letters! They
were simply the pathetic love-letters of a mother to her boy, bringing
an atmosphere of a commonplace, peaceful English home into all this
madness. With that the truth dawned on her. There were eight of them,
each mentioning money! Louis had admitted not writing to his father to
put a stop to his remittance. She had forgotten to insist that it was
done. Here was the explanation of his present orgy!
He was kneeling on the floor now, trying to grip his bitten, bleeding
fingers into the wall and crawl upwards. He thought he was in a well,
drowning. As she bent over him the well vanished, and she became his
enemy. He made a desperate lunge at her and tried to grab his papers
from her. But his body was unco-ordinated; murder was in his brain, but
it could not be transferred to his shaking hands with which he menaced
her.
She was very much stronger than he, and all the stronger now that her
acquired fear of unknown enemies had been laughed away. The thing she
realized most was that he must go to bed, that his wet clothes must come
off for fear they gave him pneumonia; that, even if they were not wet,
they must still come off and be locked up to keep him once again a
prisoner.
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