the
erratic ardours of the individual. There was a clear light in her eyes,
and her features had taken an almost marble-like nobility. The look in
her face reminded him of moments in the old days at Battle Hall, when
she had wrapped the wandering general in a tenderness that was maternal.
With a sudden penetrant insight into her heart, he realised that her
natural emotions were her nobler ones--that as child and mother the
greatness of her nature assumed its visible form. He drew her closer,
the best in him responding to the mystery he beheld dimly in her eyes.
For ten years they had not touched natures so nearly; it was the vital
breath needed to vivify a union which was not rooted in the permanence
of an enduring passion.

And as the months went on the wonder deepened in Eugenia's eyes. The old
restlessness was gone; she was like one who, having looked into the holy
of holies, keeps the inward memory clear. She was in the supreme mental
state--attained only by religious martyrs or maternal, yet childless,
women long married--when physical pain loses its relative values before
the exaltation of an abiding vision. And, above all, she was what each
woman of her race had been before her--a mother from her birth?

III

From the day of the child's birth it did not leave Eugenia's sight. Her
eyes followed it when it was carried about the room, and she watched
wistfully the dressing and undressing of the round little body. She knew
each separate frock that she had made before its coming, and each day
she called for a different and a daintier one. "I must make new ones,"
she said at last, "he is such a beauty!" And she would hold out her arms
for him, half dressed as he was, and, as he lay beside her, fresh and
cool and fragrant as a cowslip ball, she would cover the soft pink flesh
with passionate kisses. Her motherhood was an obsession, jealous,
intense, unreasoning.

They had named him after the general--Thomas Battle Webb, but to Eugenia
he was "the baby," the solitary baby in a universe where birth is as
common as death. And, indeed, he was a thing of joy--the nurse, Dudley,
Miss Chris, all admitted it. There was never so round, so rosy, so
altogether marvellous a baby, and never one that laughed so much or
cried so little. "He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth,"
declared Miss Chris. "I can see his luck already in his eyes."

At first Eugenia had been tortured by a fear that the little life would
go