I
can't let her risk cold."

Piers spoke hastily, and rose to his feet as if in preparation for
saying adieu. Jean's children were dainty little creatures, to whom he
and Vanna were truly attached; but each shrank from seeing them in the
presence of the other. The family group of the lovely mother, with her
golden-haired babies, the proud, happy father, was so perfect, so
complete, that less happy mortals looking on might well be excused a
stab of envy. Vanna and Piers each knew the pang of the childless,
which was doubled in intensity in the knowledge of the other's
suffering.

The two little girls entered the room side by side. Their sex had been
a grievous disappointment to Jean, who had the overpowering desire for a
son which possesses many women; but the little maids were pretty and
charming enough to satisfy any parent. Lorna, dark, glowing, with her
mother's wonderful eyes; the baby Joyce, a delicious fat ball crowned
with a mop of yellow curls.

They were delightfully free from shyness, and greeted the two visitors
with sweet, moist kisses, and "bears' hugs" from tiny white arms. Vanna
took Joyce on her knee and tried bravely to talk baby-talk, and keep her
eyes averted from Piers's lowering face; but at the end of ten minutes
she gave up the struggle, made her farewells and followed him into the
street.

It was a dark, misty evening--one of those evenings when the cold
penetrates to the marrow, and the great city is at its worst and
dreariest. Piers turned up the collar of his coat, so that Vanna could
see little of his face; but his walk, his bearing, the forward droop of
his head were painfully eloquent. During the whole of the ten minutes'
walk he did not speak a word, but Vanna knew that when they were alone
in her own quiet room the floodgates would open, and trembled at the
thought of yet another scene. When the door was opened she went
straight to her bedroom, lingering purposely over her toilette, in the
hope that Piers would have time to calm down, and remember his
resolution made so ardently after each fresh outburst. Of what avail to
rail against fate, when the effort could only revert on one's own head
in weariness and remorse? Was it not he who had first preached the
beauty of a spiritual love? This was the view on which she must lay
fullest stress to-night, this the pure and lofty ideal to which she must
raise his thoughts. And then Vanna--a woman through and through--stood
anot