His mother is right.

She understands him better than I do," she thought, as she looked at the clock.

"If I had told him sooner he might be with me now." Through the muffled stillness of the house the sound of the opening front door stole up to her, and she heard George come in and stop for a minute to take off his hat and coat in the lower hail.

Then she heard his footsteps move to the staircase; and while she listened she had a curious intuitive sense that it was not George at all, but a stranger who was coming to her, and that this stranger walked like a very old man.

She heard him reach the bend in the stairs, and without stopping to put out the light, pass on to her door, which was the first on the landing.