"We _must_ afford it. And oh, another thing--Have you ever thought of the
children's education?"

Thought of it? She had thought of nothing else, lying awake at night,
waiting for the baby's cry; sitting in the daytime, stitching at the small
garments that were always just too small.

"Of course," she said, submissively. She was willing to yield the glory of
the idea to him.

"Well," he said, "I don't know how we're going to manage it. One thing I
do know--there mustn't be any more of them. I can't afford it."

He had said that before so often that Aggie had felt inclined to tell him
that she couldn't afford it, either. But to-night she was silent, for he
didn't know she knew. And as she saw that he (who did know) was trying to
spare her, she blessed him in her heart.

If he did not tell her everything that the doctor had said, he told her
that Willie was all right. Willie had been declared to be a child of
powerful health. They weren't to coddle him. As if any one _had_ coddled
him! Poor Aggie only wished she had the time.

But now that her release had come, she would have time, and strength, too,
for many things that she had had to leave undone. She would get nearer to
her children, and to her husband, too. Even at four o'clock in the
morning, Aggie had joy in spite of her mortal weariness, as she rocked the
sleepless baby on the sad breast that had never suckled him. She told the
baby all about it, because she couldn't keep it in.

"My beauty," she murmured, "he will always be my baby. He sha'n't have any
little brothers or sisters, never any more. There--there--there, did
they--? Hsh-sh-sh, my sweet pet, my lamb. My little king--he shall never
be dethroned. Hush, hush, my treasure, or he'll wake his poor Daddy, he
will."

In another room, on his sleepless pillow, the baby's father turned and
groaned.

All the next day, and the next, Aggie went about with a light step, and
with eyes that brightened like a bride's, because of the spring of new
love in her heart.

It came over her now how right Arthur had been, how she ought to have kept
it up, and how fearfully she had let it go.

Not only the lectures--what did they matter?--but her reading, her music,
everything, all the little arts and refinements by which she had once
captured Arthur's heart--"Things," she said, "that made all the difference
to Arthur." How forbearing and constant he had been!

That evening she dressed her hair and put flowers on the supper-table.
Arthur opened his eyes at the unusual appearance, but said nothing. She
could see that he was cross about something--something that had occurred
in the office, probably. She had never grudged him his outbursts of
irritability. It was his only dissipation. Aggie had always congratulated
herself on being married to a good man.

Coffee, the beloved luxury they had so long renounced, was served with
that supper. But neither of them drank it. Arthur said he wasn't going to
be kept awake two nights running, and after that, Aggie's heart was too
sore to eat or drink anything. He commented bitterly on the waste. He said
he wondered how on earth they were going to pay the doctor's bills, at
that rate.

Aggie pondered. He had lain awake all night thinking of the doctor's
bills, had he? And yet that was just what they were to have no more of.
Anyhow, he had been kept awake; and, of course, that was enough to make
him irritable.

So Aggie thought she would soothe him to sleep. She remembered how he used
to go to sleep sometimes in the evenings when she played. And the music,
she reflected with her bitterness, would cost nothing.

But music, good music, costs more than anything; and Arthur was
fastidious. Aggie's fingers had grown stiff, and their touch had lost its
tenderness. Of their old tricks they remembered nothing, except to stumble
at a "stretchy" chord, a perfect bullfinch of a chord, bristling with
"accidentals," where in their youth they had been apt to shy. Arthur
groaned.

"Oh, Lord, there won't be a wink of sleep for either of us if you wake
that brat again. What on earth possesses you to strum?"

But Aggie was bent, just for the old love of it, and for a little
obstinacy, on conquering that chord.

"Oh, stop it!" he cried. "Can't you find something better to do?"

"Yes," said Aggie, trying to keep her mouth from working, "perhaps I could
find something."

Arthur looked up at her from under his eyebrows, and was ashamed.

She thought still of what she could do for him; and an inspiration came.
He had always loved to listen to her reading. Her voice had not suffered
as her fingers had; and there, in its old place on the shelf, was the
Browning he had given her.

"Would you like me to read to you?"

"Yes," he said, "if you're not too tired." He was touched by the face he
had seen, and by her pathetic efforts; but oh, he thought, if she would
only understand.

She seated herself in the old place opposite him, and read from where the
book fell open of its own accord.

  "'O, lyric Love, half angel and half bird'"--

Her voice came stammering like a child's, choked with tenderness and many
memories--

  "'And all a wonder and a wild desire--'"

"Oh no, I say, for Heaven's sake, Aggie, not that rot."

"You--you used to like it."

"Oh, I dare say, years ago. I can't stand it now."

"Can't stand it?"

Again he was softened.

"Can't understand it, perhaps, my dear. But it comes to the same thing."

"Yes," said Aggie, "it comes to the same thing."

And she read no more. For the first time, for many years, she understood
him.

That night, as they parted, he did not draw her to him and kiss her; but
he let her tired head lean towards him, and stroked her hair. Her eyes
filled with tears. She laid her forehead on his shoulder.

"Poor Aggie," he said, "poor little woman."

She lifted her head suddenly.

"It's poor you," she whispered, "poor, poor dear."




VIII


"Now, isn't it a pity for you to be going, dearie? When the place is doing
you so much good, and Susie back in another week, and all."

    [Illustration: "'Now, isn't it a pity for you to be going,
                     dearie?'"]

Aggie folded up a child's frock with great deliberation, and pressed it,
gently but firmly, into the portmanteau.

"I must go," she said, gravely. "Arthur wants me."

Mrs. Purcell was looking on with unfeigned grief at her daughter's
preparations for departure. Aggie had gone down to Queningford, not for a
flying visit, but to spend the greater part of the autumn. She and Arthur
had had to abandon some of the arrangements they had planned together;
and, though he had still insisted in general terms on Aggie's two years'
rest, the details had been left to her. Thus it happened that a year of
the rest-cure had hardly rolled by before Aggie had broken down, in a way
that had filled them both with the gravest anxieties for the future. For
if she broke down when she was resting, what would she do when the two
years were up and things had to be more or less as they were before? Aggie
was so frightened this time that she was glad to be packed off to her
mother, with Willie and Dick and Emmy and the baby. The "girls," Kate and
Eliza, had looked after them, while Aggie lay back in the warm lap of
luxury, and rested for once in her life.

All Aggie's visits had ended in the same way. The same letter from home,
the same firm and simple statement: "Arthur wants me. I must go," and
Aggie was gone before they had had a look at her.

"John and Susie will be quite offended."

"I can't help it. Arthur comes before John and Susie, and he wants me."

She had always been proud of that--his wanting her; his inability to do
without her.

"I don't know," she said, "what he _will_ have done without me all this
time."

Her mother looked at her sharply, a look that, though outwardly
concentrated on Aggie, suggested much inward criticism of Aggie's husband.

"He must learn to do without you," she said, severely.

"I'm not sure that I want him to," said Aggie, and smiled.

Her mother submitted with a heavy heart.

"My dear," she whispered, "if you had married John Hurst we shouldn't have
_had_ to say good-bye."

"I wouldn't have taken him from Susie for the world," said Aggie, grimly.
She knew that her mother had never liked poor Arthur. This knowledge
prevented her from being sufficiently grateful to John for always leaving
his trap (the trap that was once to have been hers) at her disposal. It
was waiting to take her to the station now.

Aggie had only seen her sister, Mrs. John Hurst, once since they had both
married. Whenever Aggie was in Queningford, John and Susie were in
Switzerland, on the honeymoon that, for the happy, prosperous couple,
renewed itself every year.

This year it was agreed that, when the Hursts came up to Islington for the
Grand Horse-Show in the spring, they were to be put up at the Gattys' in
Camden Town.

Aggie was excited and a little alarmed at the prospect of this visit.
Susie was accustomed to having everything very nice and comfortable about
her, and she would be critical of the villa and its ways. And, then, it
would be awkward seeing John. She smiled. It always had been awkward
seeing John.

But when the spring came a new terror was added to Aggie's hospitable
anxiety, a new embarrassment to the general awkwardness of seeing John.

After all, the Hursts put up at a hotel in town. But Susie was to come
over for tea and a long talk with Aggie, John following later.

Aggie prepared with many tremors for the meeting with her sister. She made
herself quite sick and faint in her long battling with her hair. She had
so little time for "doing" it that it had become very difficult to "do"
and when it was "done" she said to herself that it looked abominable. Her
fingers shook as they strained at the hooks of the shabby gown that was
her "best." She had found somewhere a muslin scarf that, knotted and
twined with desperate ingenuity, produced something of the effect that she
desired.

Up-stairs in the nursery, Catty, very wise for six years old, was minding
the baby, while the little nervous maid got tea ready. Aggie sat in the
drawing-room waiting for her sister. Even as she waited she dared not be
idle. There was an old coat of Arthur's that she had been lining, taking
advantage of a change to milder weather; it was warmer than the one he was
wearing, and she was afraid to let it go another day lest the wind should
turn round to the northeast again. In such anxieties Aggie moved and had
her being. For the rest, she had given the little maid a lesson in the
proper way of showing Mrs. John Hurst into the room when she arrived.

Mrs. John Hurst arrived a little late. She came in unannounced (for her
appearance had taken the little maid's breath away); she came with a
certain rustle and sweep which was much more important than anything Susie
had ever done in the old days when Aggie was the pretty one.

Aggie was moved at seeing her. She uttered a cry of affection and delight,
and gave herself to Susie's open arms.

"Darling!" said Mrs. John Hurst. "Let me have a good look at you."

She kissed her violently, held her at arm's-length for a moment, and then
kissed her again, very gently. In that moment Aggie had looked at Susie,
and Susie at Aggie, each trying to master the meaning of the other's face.
It was Susie who understood first. Prosperity was very becoming to Susie.
She was the pretty one now, and she knew it. Marriage had done for her
what maidenhood had done for her sister, and Susie was the image of what
Aggie used to be.

But Aggie herself! Nothing was left now of the diminutive distinction that
had caused her to be once adored in Queningford. Susie was young at
two-and-thirty, and Aggie, not three years older, was middle-aged. Not
that there were many wrinkles on Aggie's face. Only a deep, crescent line
on each side of a mouth that looked as if it had been strained tight with
many tortures. It was as if Nature had conceived a grudge against Aggie,
and strove, through maternity, to stamp out her features as an individual.

"Oh yes," said Aggie, to break the intolerable tension of that look, "it's
one of your old ones, turned and trimmed to make it look different."

"Poor darling," said Susie; but what she thought was that it did look
different.

Luckily Mrs. John Hurst was full of the Horse-Show. She could talk of
nothing else. It was the Horse-Show that had made her late. She had waited
for the judging. John would look in as soon as he could get away. Gownboy
had carried off the gold cup and the gold medal again, and the judges had
been unjust, as usual, to John (John, grown prosperous, had added
horse-breeding to sheep-farming.) Ladslove had only been highly commended.
Ladslove was Rosemary's foal.

"You remember Rosemary, Aggie?"

Aggie remembered neither Rosemary nor her foal. But she was sorry for
Ladslove. She was grateful to him, too, for holding Susie's attention and
diverting it from all the things she didn't want her to see. She was
afraid of Susie; afraid of her sympathy; afraid of her saying something
about Barbara (_she_ couldn't speak of little Bessie, Susie's only child,
who had died three years ago). Above all, she was afraid of Susie's
inquisitive tongue and searching eyes.

She flung herself into fictitious reminiscences of the Queningford stud.
She couldn't have done worse.

"Oh, Aggie," said her sister, "you _do_ mix them up so."

"Well," said poor Aggie, "there are so many of them, I can't keep count."

"Never mind, dear." Aggie's words recalled Susie to her sisterly duties.
"I haven't asked after the children yet. How many are there? _I_ can't
keep count, either, you know."

Aggie turned away, found the old coat she had been lining, and spread it
on her lap. Susie's eye roamed and rested on the coat, and Aggie's
followed it.

"Do excuse my going on with this. Arthur wants it."

Susie smiled in recognition of the familiar phrase. Ever since he had
first appeared in Queningford, Arthur had always been wanting something.
But, as she looked at the poor coat, she reflected that one thing he had
never wanted, or had never asked for, and that was help.

"Aggie," she said, "I do hope that if you ever want a little help, dear,
you'll come to me."

Susie, preoccupied with the idea of liberality, could not see that she had
chosen her moment badly. Her offer, going as it did, hand-in-hand with her
glance, reflected upon Arthur.

"I don't want any help, thank you," said Aggie. "Arthur's doing very well
now. Very well, indeed."

"Then," said Susie, "why on earth do you break your back over that
stitching, if there's no need? That's not my notion of economy."

Susie was a kind-hearted woman, but eight years of solid comfort and
prosperity had blunted her perceptions. Moreover, she had an earnestly
practical mind, a mind for which material considerations outweighed every
other.

"My dear Susie, your notion of economy would be the same as mine, if you
had had seven children."

"But I haven't," said Susie, sadly. She was humbled by the rebuff she had
just received. "I only wish I had."

Aggie looked up from her work with a remorseful tenderness in her tired
eyes. She was sorry for poor Susie, who had lost her only one.

But Susie had already regretted her momentary weakness, and her pride was
up. She was a primitive woman, and had always feared lest reproach should
lie upon her among the mothers of many children. Besides, she had never
forgotten that her John had loved Aggie first. Aggie, with her seven
children, should not set her down as a woman slighted by her husband.

"I haven't had the strength for it," said she; and Aggie winced. "The
doctor told John I mustn't have more than the one. And I haven't."

Poor Aggie hardened her face before Susie's eyes, for she felt that they
were spying out and judging her. And Susie, seeing that set look,
remembered how badly Aggie had once behaved to her John. Therefore she was
tempted to extol him.

"But then," said she, magnificently, "I have my husband." (As if Aggie
hadn't hers!) "Nobody knows what John is but me. Do you know, there hasn't
been one unkind word passed between us, nor one cross look, ever since he
married me eight years ago."

"There are very few who can say that." Aggie tried to throw a ring of
robust congratulation into her flat tones.

"Very few. But there's no one like him."

"No one like you, either, I should say."

"Well, for him there isn't. He's never had eyes for any one but
me--never."

Aggie cast down her eyes demurely at that. She had no desire to hurt Susie
by reminding her of the facts. But Susie, being sensitive on the subject,
had provided for all that.

"Of course, dear, I know, just at first, he thought of you. A fancy. He
told me all about it; and how you wouldn't have him, _he_ said. He said he
didn't think you thought him gentle enough. That shows how much you knew
about him, my dear."

"I should always have supposed," said Aggie, coldly, "he would be gentle
to any one he cared for."

She knew, and Susie knew, she had supposed the very opposite; but she
wished Susie to understand that John had been rejected with full
realization of his virtues, because, good as he was, somebody else was
still better. So that there might be no suspicion of regret.

"Gentle? Why, Aggie, if that was what you wanted, he's as gentle as a
woman. Gentler--there aren't many women, I can tell you, who have the
strength that goes with that."

Aggie bent her head lower yet over her work. She thought she could see in
Susie's speech a vindictive and critical intention. All the time she had,
Aggie thought, been choosing her words judicially, so that each
unnecessary eulogy of John should strike at some weak spot in poor Arthur.
She felt that Susie was not above paying off her John's old scores by an
oblique and cowardly blow at the man who had supplanted him. She wished
that Susie would either leave off talking about John, or go.

But Susie still interpreted Aggie's looks as a challenge, and the hymn of
praise swelled on.

"My dear--if John wasn't an angel of goodness and unselfishness--When I
think how useless I am to him, and of all that he has done for me, and all
that he has given up--"

Aggie was trembling. She drew up the coat to shelter her.

"--why it makes my blood boil to think that any one should know him, and
not know what he is."

Aggie dropped the coat in her agitation. As she stooped to pick it up,
Susie put out an anxious arm to help her.

Their eyes met.

"Oh, Aggie, dear--" said Susie. It was all she _could_ say. And her voice
had in it consternation and reproach.

But Aggie faced her.

"Well?" she said, steadily.

"Oh, nothing--" It was Susie's turn for confusion. "Only you said--and we
thought--after what you've been told--"

"What was I told?"

Horror overcame Susie, and she lost her head.

"Weren't you told, then?"

Her horror was reflected in her sister's eyes. But Aggie kept calm.

"Susie" she said, "what do you mean? That I wasn't told of the risk? Is
that what you meant?"

"Oh, Aggie--" Susie was helpless. She could not say what she had meant,
nor whether she had really meant it.

"Who _should_ be told if I wasn't? Surely I was the proper person?"

Susie recovered herself. "Of course, dear, of course you were."

"Well?" Aggie forced the word again through her tight, strained lips.

"I'm not blaming you, Aggie, dear. I know it isn't your fault."

"Whose is it, then?"

Susie's soft face hardened, and she said nothing.

Her silence lay between them; silence that had in it a throbbing heart of
things unutterable; silence that was an accusation, a judgment of the man
that Aggie loved.

Then Aggie turned, and in her immortal loyalty she lied.

"I never told him."

"Never told him? Oh, my dear, you were very wrong."

"Why should I? He was ill. It would have worried him. It worried me less
to keep it to myself."

"But--the risk?"

"Oh," said Aggie, sublimely, "we all take it. Some of us don't know. I
did. That's all."

She drew a deep breath of relief and satisfaction. For four months, ever
since she had known that some such scene as this must come, she had known
that she would meet it this way.

"Hush," she said. "I think I hear the children."




IX


They came in, a pathetic little procession, three golden-haired couples,
holding one another's hands.

First, Arty and Emmy, then Catty and Baby, then Willie and Dick, all
solemn and shy. Baby turned his back on the strange aunt and burrowed into
his mother's lap. They were all silent but Dick. Dick wanted to know if
his Auntie liked birfdays, and if people gave her fings on her
birfday--pausing to simulate a delicate irrelevance before he announced
that _his_ birfday was to-morrow.

"Dickie, dear," said his mother, nervously, "we don't talk about our
birthdays before they've come."

She could not bear Susie to be able to say that one of her children had
given so gross a hint.

The children pressed round her, and her hands were soon at their proud and
anxious work: coaxing stray curls into their place; proving the strength
of the little arms; slipping a sock, to show the marbled rose of the round
limbs.

"Just feel Emmy's legs. She's as firm as firm. And look at Baby, how
beautifully he's made. They're all healthy. There isn't an unsweet,
unsound spot in one of them."

    [Illustration: "'There isn't an unsweet, unsound spot in one
                     of them'"]

"No, no, they look it. They're magnificent. And they're you all over
again."

"Barbara wasn't. She was the very image of her father." Her love of him
conquered the stubborn silence of her grief, so that she did not shrink
from the beloved name.

"Susie," she said, when the little procession had, at its own petition,
filed solemnly out again, "you can't say you've seen too much of them."

Susie smiled sadly as she looked at the wreck that was poor Aggie. "No, my
dear; but I haven't seen quite enough of you. There isn't much left of
you, you know."

"Me?" She paused, and then broke out again, triumphant in her
justification: "No matter if there's nothing left of me. _They're_ alive."

She raised her head. Worn out and broken down she might be, but she was
the mother of superb children. Something stronger and more beautiful than
her lost youth flamed in her as she vindicated her motherhood. She struck
even Susie's dull imagination as wonderful.

Half an hour later Aggie bent her aching back again over her work. She had
turned a stiff, set face to Susie as she parted from her. John had come
and gone, and it had not been awkward in the least. He was kind and
courteous (time and prosperity had improved him), but he had, as Susie
said, no eyes for any one but his wife.

As Aggie worked she was assailed by many thoughts and many memories. Out
of the past there rose a sublime and patient face. It smiled at her above
a butchery of little lambs.

Yes, Susie was right about her John. There was no weak spot in him. He had
not a great intellect, but he had a great heart and a great will. Aggie
remembered how once, in her thoughtful maiden days, she had read in one of
the vicar's books a saying which had struck her at the time, for the vicar
had underlined it twice. "If there is aught spiritual in man, it is the
Will." She had not thought of John as a very spiritual person. She had
dimly divined in him the possibility of strong passions, such passions as
make shipwreck of men's lives. And here was Arthur--he, poor dear, would
never be shipwrecked, for he hadn't one strong passion in him; he had only
a few weak little impulses, incessantly frustrating a will weaker than
them all. She remembered how her little undeveloped soul, with its
flutterings and strugglings after the immaterial, had been repelled by the
large presence of the natural man. It had been afraid to trust itself to
his strength, lest its wings should suffer for it. It had not been afraid
to trust itself to Arthur; and his weakness had made it a wingless thing,
dragged down by the suffering of her body.

She said to herself, "If I had known John was like that--"

She stopped her brain before it could answer for her! "You wouldn't be
sitting here now stitching at that coat."

She stitched on till she could see to stitch no more; for tears came and
blinded her eyes, and fell upon the coat.

That was just after she had kissed it.




X


It was Easter, three weeks after Susie's visit; and Arthur was going away
for a fortnight, his first real holiday in seven years. For some time he
had been lengthening out his office hours, and increasing his salary, by
adding night to day. And now he had worn himself out by his own ferocious
industry. He knew, and Aggie knew, that he was in for a bad illness if he
didn't get away, and at once. He had written in his extremity to a
bachelor brother, known in the little house at Camden Town as the Mammon
of Unrighteousness. The brother had a big house down in Kent; and into
that house, though it was the house of Mammon, Arthur proposed that he
should be received for a week or two. He took care to mention, casually,
and by way of a jest after the brother's own heart, that for those weeks
he, Arthur, would be a lonely widower.

The brother was in the habit of remembering Arthur's existence once a year
at Christmas. He would have had him down often enough, he said, if the
poor beggar could have come alone. But he barred Aggie and the children.
Aggie, poor dear, was a bore; and the children, six, by Jove (or was it
seven?), were just seven (or was it six?) blanked nuisances. Though
uncertain about the number of the children, he always sent seven or eight
presents at Christmas to be on the safe side. So when Arthur announced
that he was a widower, the brother, in his bachelor home, gave a great
roar of genial laughter. He saw an opportunity of paying off all his debts
to Arthur in a comparatively easy fashion all at once.

"Take him for a fortnight, poor devil? I'd take him for ten fortnights.
Heavens, what a relief it must be to get away from 'Aggie'!"

And when Arthur got his brother's letter, he and Aggie were quite sorry
that they had ever called him the Mammon of Unrighteousness.

But the brother kept good company down in Kent. Aggie knew that, in the
old abominable Queningford phrase, he was "in with the county." She saw
her Arthur mixing in gay garden scenes, with a cruel spring sun shining on
the shabby suit that had seen so many springs. Arthur's heart failed him
at the last moment, but Aggie did not fail. Go he must, she said. If the
brother was the Mammon of Unrighteousness, all the more, she argued,
should he be propitiated--for the children's sake. (The Mammon was too
selfish ever to marry, and there were no other nieces and nephews.) She
represented the going down into Kent as a sublime act of self-sacrifice by
which Arthur, as it were, consecrated his paternity. She sustained that
lofty note till Arthur himself was struck with his own sublimity. And when
she told him to stand up and let her look at him, he stood up, tired as he
was, and let her look at him.

Many sheepfolds have delivered up their blameless flocks to Mammon. But
Aggie, when she considered the quality of the god, felt dimly that no more
innocent victim was ever yet provided than poor, jaded Arthur in his suit
of other years. The thought in her mind was that it would not do for him
to look _too_ innocent. He must go--but not like that.

So, for three days of blinding labor, Aggie applied herself to the
propitiation of Mammon, the sending forth of her sacrificial lamb properly
decked for the sacrifice. There never had been such a hauling and
overhauling of clothes, such folding and unfolding, such stitching and
darning and cleansing and pressing, such dragging out and packing of heavy
portmanteaus, such a getting up of shirts that should be irreproachable.

Aggie did it all herself; she would trust no one, least of all the
laundress. She had only faint old visions of John Hurst's collars to guide
her; but she was upheld by an immense relief, born of her will to please,
and Arthur, by a blind reliance, born of his utter weariness. At times
these preparations well-nigh exasperated him. "If going meant all that
fuss," he said, "he'd rather not go." But if he had been told that
anything would happen to prevent his going, he would have sat down and
cursed or cried. His nerves clamored for change now--any change from the
office and the horrible yellow villa in Camden Town.

All of a sudden, at the critical moment, Aggie's energy showed signs of
slowing down, and it seemed to both of them that she would never get him
off.

Then, for the first time, he woke to a dreary interest in the packing. He
began to think of things for himself. He thought of a certain suit of
flannels which he must take with him, which Aggie hadn't cleaned or
mended, either. In his weak state, it seemed to him that his very going
depended on that suit of flannels. He went about the house inquiring
irritably for them. He didn't know that his voice had grown so fierce in
its quality that it scared the children; or that he was ordering Aggie
about like a dog; or that he was putting upon her bowed and patient back
burdens heavier than it should have borne. He didn't know what he was
doing.

And he did not know why Aggie's brain was so dull and her feet so slow,
nor why her hands, that were incessantly doing, seemed now incapable of
doing any one thing right. He did not know, because he was stupefied with
his own miserable sensations, and Aggie had contrived to hide from him
what Susie's sharp eyes had discovered. Besides, he felt that, in his
officially invalid capacity, a certain license was permitted him.

So, when he found his flannels in the boot cupboard, he came and flung
them onto the table where Aggie bent over her ironing-board. A feeble fury
shook him.

"Nobody but a fool," he said, "would ram good flannels into a filthy boot
cupboard."

"I didn't," said Aggie, in a strange, uninterested voice. "You must have
put them there yourself."

He remembered.

"Well," he said, placably, for he was, after all, a just man, "do you
think they could be made a little cleaner?"

"I--can't--" said Aggie, in a still stranger voice, a voice that sounded
as if it were deflected somehow by her bent body and came from another
woman rather far away. It made Arthur turn in the doorway and look at her.
She rose, straightening herself slowly, dragging herself upward from the
table with both hands. Her bleached lips parted; she drew in her breath
with a quick sound like a sob, and let it out again on a sharp note of
pain.

He rushed to her, all his sunken manhood roused by her bitter, helpless
cry.

"Aggie, darling, what is it? Are you ill?"

"No, no, I'm not ill; I'm only tired," she sobbed, clutching at him with
her two hands, and swaying where she stood.

He took her in his arms and half dragged, half carried her from the room.
On the narrow stairs they paused.

"Let me go alone," she whispered.

She tried to free herself from his grasp, failed, and laid her head back
on his shoulder again; and he lifted her and carried her to her bed.

He knelt down and took off her shoes. He sat beside her, supporting her
while he let down her long, thin braids of hair. She looked up at him, and
saw that there was still no knowledge in the frightened eyes that gazed at
her; and when he would have unfastened the bodice of her gown, she pushed
back his hands and held them.

"No, no," she whimpered. "Go away. Go away."

"Aggie--"

"Go away, I tell you."

"My God," he moaned, more smitten, more helpless than she. For, as she
turned from him, he understood the height and depth of her tender perjury.
She had meant to spare him for as long as it might be, because, afterwards
(she must have felt), his own conscience would not be so merciful.

He undressed her, handling her with his clumsy gentleness, and laid her in
her bed.

He had called the maid; she went bustling to and fro, loud-footed and
wild-eyed. From time to time a cry came from the nursery where the little
ones were left alone. Outside, down the street, Arty and Catty ran
hand-in-hand to fetch the doctor, their sobbing checked by a mastering
sense of their service and importance.

And the man, more helpless than any child, clung to the woman's hand and
waited with her for her hour.

As he waited he looked round the shabby room, and saw for the first time
how poor a place it was. Nothing seemed to have been provided for Aggie;
nothing ever was provided for her; she was always providing things for
other people. His eyes fastened on the Madonna di Gran Duca fading in her
frame. He remembered how he had bought it for Aggie seven years ago. Aggie
lay under the Madonna, with her eyes closed, making believe that she
slept. But he could see by the fluttering of her eyelids that her spirit
was awake and restless.

Presently she spoke.

"Arthur," she said, "I believe I'm going to have a nice quiet night, after
all. But when--when the time comes, you're not to worry, do you hear? Kate
and mother will come up and look after me. And you're to go away
to-morrow, just as if nothing had happened."

She paused.

"The flannels," she said, "shall be washed and sent after you. You're not
to worry."

She was providing still.

"Oh, Aggie--darling--don't."

"Why not? _You_ ought to go to bed, because you'll have to get up so early
to-morrow morning."

She closed her eyes, and he watched and waited through minutes that were
hours. It seemed to him that it was another man than he who waited and
watched. He was estranged from his former self, the virtuous, laborious
self that he had once known, moving in its dull and desolate routine.
Thoughts came to him, terrible, abominable thoughts that could never have
occurred to it.

    [Illustration: "Thoughts came to him, terrible thoughts"]

"It would have been better," said this new self, "if I had been unfaithful
to her. _That_ wouldn't have killed her."

As if she had heard him through some spiritual sense, she pressed his hand
and answered him.

"Thank God," she whispered, hoarsely, "that you've always loved me."

She struggled with her voice for a moment; then it came, brave and clear.

"Listen, Arthur. I wrote to mother three weeks ago. About this. I've made
her think that it was I who wanted the children, always, from the very
first. She'll understand that I couldn't be happy without a baby in my
arms. It _is_ different. They're never quite the same after the first
year. Even Arty wasn't. Mother will understand. She won't be hard."

She had provided for everything. It was her lie that proved the extremity
of her fear, her foreboding.

If only she had not lied!

Somehow, in the seven years of his married life, he had never seen this
calamity in front of him. His dreams had always been of a time when their
children should be out in the world, when he saw himself walking with his
wife in some quiet country place, like Queningford.

If she had not lied!

He sought for calm words wherewith to support her; but no words came. He
clutched at the bedclothes. His eyes were blind with tears, his ears
deafened by the sound of his own pulses.

In a moment the seven years were unveiled. He had a sudden vision of
Aggie's incorruptible love and divine tenderness before his grief closed
over him.

Her eyes were resting upon his.

"I'm not afraid," she said; "not the least little bit. I'd rather you went
away to-morrow. I don't--mind--being left."

But when to-morrow came it was he who was left.

He was sitting in the room underneath Aggie's. He had a pen in his hand,
and his mind was unusually calm and clear. He had just telegraphed to his
brother that he couldn't go--because Aggie was dead. Now he was trying to
write to Aggie's mother to tell her to come--because Aggie was dead.

He had a great many things to see to--because Aggie was dead.

All at once he raised his head; he listened; he started up with a groan
that was a cry, and went from the room.

Up-stairs in the nursery a child's voice was singing:

  "'I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea.
    And it was full of pretty things--for Baby--and for me.'"