found what she sought--the
closed blue leather case which she had looked at so many times.

"If you are going to show me some brute's photograph I simply refuse to
look," Michael said. "All that part of your life is over and we are
going to begin afresh, darling one, no matter what you did."

But she crept nearer to him as she opened the case--and her voice was
full and sweet, shy tenderness as she blurted out:

"It is not a brute's photograph, Michael, it is the picture of your own
little son."

"My God!" cried Michael, the sudden violent emotion making him very
pale. "Sabine--how dared you keep this from me all these years--I--"
Then he seized her in his arms and for a few seconds they could neither
of them speak--his caresses were so fierce. At last he exclaimed
brokenly, "Sabine--with the knowledge of this between us how could you
ever have even contemplated belonging to another man--Oh! if I had only
known. Where is--my son?"

"You must listen, Michael, to everything," Sabine whispered, "then you
will understand--I was simply terrified when I realized at last, and
only wanted to go back to you and be comforted, so I wrote a letter at
once to tell you, and as Mr. Parsons was in England again I sent it to
him to have it put safely into your hands. But by then you had gone
right off to China, and Mr. Parsons sent the letter back to me, it was
useless to forward it to you, he said, you might not get it for a year."

Michael strained her to his heart once more, while his eyes grew wet.

"Oh, my poor little girl--all alone, how frightfully cruel it was, no
wonder you hated me then, and could not forgive me even afterward."

"I did not hate you--I was only terrified and longing to rush off
somewhere and hide--so Simone suggested San Francisco--the furthest off
she knew, and we hurried over there and then I was awfully ill, and when
my baby was born I very nearly died."

Michael was wordless, he could only kiss her. "That is what made him so
delicate--my wretchedness and rushing about," she went on, "and so I was
punished because, after three months, God took him back again--my dear
little one--just when I was beginning to grow comforted and to love him.
He was exactly like you, Michael, with the same blue eyes, and I
thought--I thought, we should go back to Arranstoun and finish our
estrangements and be happy again--the three of us--when you did come
home--I grew radiant and quite well--" Here two big tears gathe