CHAPTER 41Mrs. Forbes sat at her desk. She had sat there all night and had not moved. Only her thoughts moved, sliding from picture to picture, and when they had come to the end, the terrible remorseless end, they went back again and began at the beginning.
At the birth of her child—that was always how she thought of him, as her child. The little quiet man whom she had married didn’t seem to come into it at all. The other children were his. She had borne them with impatience and without joy. But Mac was hers—hers only. He was like her people, the people from whom she herself derived her good looks, her pride, her independence. There was nothing in the other children that engaged her interest. As he grew, so her pride in him grew. When the war came he was between seven and eight years old.
