WORLD'S END

"Then face this question in your own heart." The doctor had his gold pince-nez in his hand, and used them as if to pin Lanny down. "Would you be jealous if your mother were to love some man?"

"Yes, sir - I'm afraid maybe I would."

"But ask yourself this: when the time comes that you fall in love with some woman - as you will before many years are past - will you expect your mother to be jealous of that woman?"

"Would she?" asked the boy, surprised.

"She may have a strong impulse to do it, and it will mean a moral struggle to put her son's welfare ahead of her own. My point is that you may have to face such a struggle - to put your mother's welfare ahead of yours. Do you think you could do it?"

"I suppose I could, if it was the right sort of man."

"Of course, if your mother fell in love with a worthless man, for example a drunkard, you would urge her against it, as any of her friends would. But you must face the fact that your mother is more apt to know what sort of man can make her happy than her son is."

"Yes, sir, I suppose so," admitted the son.

"Understand again, I know nothing about your mother's affairs. I am just discussing ordinary human behavior. The most likely situation is that your mother has a lover and is keeping it a secret from you because she thinks it would shock you."

The blood began a violent surge into Lanny's throat and cheeks. "Oh, no, sir! I don't think that can be!"

Aiming his gold pince-nez at Lanny's face, the other went on relentlessly. "It would be a wholly unnatural thing for a young woman like your mother to go for ten years without a love life. It wouldn't be good for her health, and still less for her happiness. It is far more likely that she has tried to find some man who can make her happy. So long as you were a little boy, it would be possible for her to keep this hidden from you. But from now on it will not be so easy. Sooner or later you may discover signs that your mother is in love with some man. When that happens, you have to know your duty, which is not to stand in her way, or to humiliate or embarrass her, but to say frankly and sensibly: 'Of course, I want you to be happy; I accept the situation, and will make myself agreeable to the man of your choice.' Will you remember that?"

"Yes, sir," said Lanny. But his voice was rather shaky.

VIII

Beauty had been wandering around in the shops, in a state of mind as if Lanny were having his tonsils out. A great relief to find him whole and sound, not blushing or crying or doing anything to embarrass her. "Dr. Bauer-Siemans is a well-informed man," he said with dignity. He was .going to take it like that, an affair between men; his mother need not concern herself with it any further.

"Home, Pierre," said Beauty; and on the way they were silent.

Something was going on in Lanny's mind, a quite extraordinary procиss. There used to be a popular kind of puzzle, a picture in which a cat was hidden, a large cat filling a good part of the picture in such a way that you had a hard time to find it. But when once you had found it, it stood out so you could hardly see anything else; you couldn't imagine how you had ever looked at that picture without seeing the cat.

So now with Lanny Budd; he was looking at a picture, tracing one line and then another; until suddenly - there was a large cat grinning at him!

Farther out on the peninsula of Antibes, a mile or so from the Budd home, lived a young French painter, Marcel Detaze. He was several years younger than Beauty, a well-built, active man with a fair mustache and hair soft and fine, so that the wind blew it every way; he had grave features and dark melancholy eyes, in striking contrast with his hair. He lived in a cottage, having a peasant woman in now and then to cook him a meal and clean up. He painted the seascapes of that varied coast, loving the waves that lifted themselves in great green masses and crashed into white foam on the rocks; he painted them well, but his work wasn't known, and like so many young painters he had a problem to find room for all his canvases. Now and then he sold one, but most were stored in a shed, against the day when collectors would come bidding.

Beauty thought a great deal of Marcel's work, and had bought several specimens and hung them where her friends would see them. She watched his progress closely, and often when she came home from a walk would say: "I stopped at Marcel's; he's improving all the time." Or she would say: "I am going over to Marcel's; some of the others are coming to tea." There were half a dozen painters who had their studios within walking distance, and they would stop in and make comments on one another's work. It had never struck Lanny as strange that Beauty would go to meet a painter, instead of inviting him to her home to tea, as she did other men.