tremor of grief and disappointment, and turning quickly with a rapid awkward movement of her short figure, she went out of the room as fast as she could, slamming the door behind her.
When she had gone there was silence for a minute, save for the gaseous flare and crumble of the coal-fire in the grate and the stertorous, nervous and uneasy labour of Luke’s breath. Then his sister turned to him and looking at him with eyes which had grown dead and lustreless, and in a tone that was full of the sombre and weary resignation that was now frequent when she spoke, she said: “Well, forget about it. She’ll get over it…. You will, too…. It’s done now, and it can’t be helped… So forget it…. I know, I know,” she said with a sombre, weary, and fatal resignation as she shook her head. “We all have these great dreams and big ambitions when we’re twenty…. I know…. I had them, too…. Don’t break your heart about it, Gene…. Life’s not worth it…. So forget it…. Just forget about it…. You’ll forget,” she muttered, “like I did.”
Later that night, when his sister had departed for her home and his brother had gone to bed, he sat with his mother in the parlour looking at the fire. Blundering, stumbling incoherently, he tried desperately to reassure her, to tell her of his resolution to expiate his crime, to retrieve his failure, somehow to justify her in the faith and support she had given him. He spoke wildly, foolishly, desperately, of a dozen plans in progress, promising everything, swearing anything, and sure of nothing. He told her he was ready to go to work at once, to do any work that he could find—like a drowning man he clutched wildly at a dozen straws—he would get a job on the paper as a reporter; he would teach school; there were great sums of money to be made from advertising, he had a friend in that profession, he was sure he would succeed there; he felt sure that Professor Hatcher could get him placed at some small college teaching drama and play-writing courses; someone had told him he could find employment editing the little magazine or “house organ” of a department store in the city; a friend at college had secured employment as librarian of an ocean liner; another made large sums of money selling floor-mops and brushes to the housewives of the Middle West—he blurted out the foolish and futile projects feverishly, clutching at straw after straw, and halted abruptly, baffled by her silence and by the sudden sickening realization that he no longer had a straw to clutch at—how foolish, futile, feeble all these projects were!
As for his mother, she sat staring straight into the fire and made no answer.
