"Am I not your mother? Are you not my son?"
"No!" answered Bressant.
He threw so tremendous a weight of malignant energy into the utterance
of this single word, although not raising his voice higher than his
usual tone, that the moral effect upon the woman was as if he had dealt
her a furious blow on the breast. Completely stunned at first, she stood
as if dead, except that her body, upright and rigid, vibrated slightly
from side to side, like a column about to fall. So sudden, too, had been
the shock, that her arms still remained outstretched, and the track of
her tears still glistened upon her cheeks, tears shed so utterly in vain
as to acquire a trait of ghastly absurdity.
As sense and reflection began to dawn again, the first instinctive
defence she attempted was that of incredulity. It was to gain
breathing-space rather than from any hope in its efficacy. But
afterward, following the ability to hear and the capacity to comprehend,
the grim reality settled darkly down. Her life for the last twenty-five
years, then, had been a miserable blunder; her love, hopes, and fears
wasted, and turned to ridicule; her self-sacrifice, a wretched
self-deception, a throwing of all possibilities of happiness into the
bottomless pit, whence no return could ever come to her; every thought,
aspiration, and desire, which had visited her heart had been a
mockery--meaningless and empty.
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