Once on the train, with the towers of the university building out of sight, Victor's mind went forward toward the great city whereto he was now hurrying in the spirit of one about to enter a tiger-haunted jungle. Hitherto he had been unafraid of its tumult, for there his mother lived. Her home, vague of outline as it was, offered refuge from the thunder and the shouting. But now its shelter was worse than useless, for its lintel was marked with a sign of shame and terror, and this the law and the lawless knew equally well.
"How will she seem to me now," he asked himself. "What will she say to me when we meet?"
.....
His mother timidly lifted her face. "Victor, Mrs. Joyce is my most loyal friend. I owe her more than you know. I wish you would come."
He yielded with a sense of stepping down, but as he found himself seated beside Miss Wood and whirring swiftly up the street his inflexible attitude softened. "For this one night I will follow; after that I lead," he promised himself.
