He had hard work to control himself, but he reflected
that with him lay the responsibility of dissuading Ninitta from her mad
project.
"But it will be better still," he urged, "to be with him. What can a
boy do without his mother?"
She bent her head forward, gazing into his eyes as if she were trying
to read his very soul; then she threw it backward with a sharp moan,
shaking his hands from hers with a tragic gesture.
"He would be ashamed," she said. "Now he is too young to know that he
is better without his mother."
She looked around the familiar studio with a sweeping, panting glance;
then she turned again to Fenton, clasping both his hands with one of
hers.
"Think of what I have done for you," she said; "and write me about him.
I shall die if you do not."
And there shot through Fenton's mind a sense of the terrible tragedy
which lay in such an appeal for such an end.
When she was gone, Fenton consoled himself with the reflection that the
lack of money would prevent Ninitta from carrying out her wild whim.
He, of course, could not know that soon after Nino's birth Herman had
started a fund for him in a savings bank, and to the mother's intense
gratification had the deposits made in her name as trustee. He had
taught Ninitta to sign her name; and great had been her pleasure in
watching the little fund grow.
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