s one quiet misty morning that, as we sat together in tranquil
talk, we heard faltering steps within our garden. We had seen, let me
say, very little of the other inhabitants of our valley. We had
sometimes seen a pair of figures wandering at a distance, and we had
even met neighbours and exchanged a greeting. But the valley had no
social life of its own, and no one ever seemed, so far as we knew, to
enter any other dwelling, though they met in quiet friendliness. Cynthia
went to the door and opened it; then she darted out, and, just when I
was about to follow, she returned, leading by the hand a tiny child, who
looked at us with an air of perfect contentment and simplicity.

"Where on earth has this enchanting baby sprung from?" said Cynthia,
seating the child upon her lap, and beginning to talk to it in a
strangely unintelligible language, which the child appeared to
understand perfectly.

I laughed. "Out of our two hearts, perhaps," I said. At which Cynthia
blushed, and said that I did not understand or care for children. She
added that men's only idea about children was to think how much they
could teach them.

"Yes," I said, "we will begin lessons to-morrow, and go on to the Latin
Grammar very shortly."

At which Cynthia folded the child in her arms, to defend it, and
reassured it in a sentence which is far too silly to set down here.

I think that sometimes on earth the arrival of a first child is a very
trying time for a wedded pair. The husband is apt to find his wife's
love almost withdrawn from him, and to see her nourishing all kinds of
jealousies and vague ambitions for her child. Paternity is apt to be a
very bewildered and often rather dramatic emotion. But it was not so
with us. The child seemed the very thing we had been needing without
knowing it. It was a constant source of interest and delight; and in
spite of Cynthia's attempts to keep it ignorant and even fatuous, it did
develop a very charming intelligence, or rather, as I soon saw, began to
perceive what it already knew. It soon overwhelmed us with questions,
and used to patter about the garden with me, airing all sorts of
delicious and absurd fancies. But, for all that, it did seem to make an
end of the first utter closeness of our love. Cynthia after this seldom
went far afield, and I ranged the hills and woods alone; but it was all
absurdly and continuously happy, though I began to wonder how long it
could last, and whether my faculties an