liar nor a madman. When I had finished I looked at her expectantly, even a little apprehensively. In the telling, the story had begun to sound fantastic. For the first time, I thought that maybe I had actually fallen asleep in the sun without realizing it and been awakened by the nightmare. But my mother's reaction was so startling that I forgot my doubts.

For several seconds, she stared at me in silence. Without warning her eyes filmed over and a tear spilled through her lashes to trickle down her cheek. In dumb fascination, I watched the slow progression of that single tear down her weathered skin.

She spoke in a strained whisper. "Would you describe him again?"

At first I didn't know what she meant. Then, puzzled, I described the man of the vision. I could see him very clearly. Sandy hair thinning over a high forehead. Soft gray eyes mirroring a compassionate intelligence. A thin, high-bridged nose. A wide, responsive mouth, curving slightly in a pensive smile. Stooped shoulders that made him look slighter and shorter than he was, though my impression was that he was taller than average.

It was only when the portrait was complete that I realized that, except for the bent shoulders and the thinning hair, I had been describing myself.

My mother looked away, covering her face with her hands. I saw her shoulders quiver. A suspicion nibbled at the fringe of my mind, rejected instantly with a spasm of horror.

"Mom! What is it? Who was he?"

I was shocked by the agony of pain in her eyes.

"Oh, Paul!"

I put my hands quickly on her shoulders and shook her gently. "Tell me," I said. "You've got to tell me."

"I can't!"

I was young but I felt very mature and protective and able to take anything. "You don't have to hide anything from me," I said.

Haltingly, she told me about my father and about the brief days she had known him, the short interval of love on which she had built a lonely life. She pleaded with me to feel no bitterness toward the man who was my father. He had given her all he could—love, tenderness, understanding, even a child. She 

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