Viewing page 42 of 143

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-37-

[[underline]] I RETURN TO MY MOTHER. [[/underline]]

Though I can recollect but little of my voyage to England, the final meeting with my family ad De Kayser's Hotel in London remains clearly in my memory. As i greeted my mother and recognized the same mad, luminous eyes and unsmiling mouth, I felt the apprehension of a small animal caught in a net and for no good of its own. Had it been possible I would have made my escape then and there.

I was dressed in a sailor suit, with a diminutive bustle that I hated, and a high starched collar that choked me. After a silent inspection my mother addressed me as the would a grown-up person:

"A bustle, a standing collar, and an American accent are inappropriate here".

I had scarcely time to feel overwhelmed by this disapprobation when my attention was drawn to my brother who had entered the room. I remembered him as a delicate boy, with thin, anxious face bent forward as though to peer through the dilemnas of his troubled mind. I was unprepared for the St. Amar who now stood before me.

Dressed in black velvet, his bent figure was that of an old man. Below the sloping shoulders fell a youthful face almost covered by a mass of blonde hair which, mingling with an uncut beard, descended half-way to his waist.

He approached me, then seeming to shun the gaze of a stranger, raised two thin hands to mask his face. Bewildered, I would have stepped back had there not suddenly risen before me the memory of another figure. It was Jane's. Her pathetic child face resembled, in some remote way, my brother's. They shared the same fatality. Perhaps her friendship had been sought for its affinity with this retrospective sadness.