more wounded by going than by staying. But you also knew that during all
those months you would have had to listen while I bemoaned the
circumstances, and bewailed my plot. You knew the bloom would be taken
off the coming joy, so you preferred to let me go. Oh, Helen, is not
this true?"

She bent her head and kissed his hand. She was weeping silently. She
could not say it was not true.

"It was the Upas tree indeed," said Ronnie.

"Darling," she whispered, "it was my fault too--"

"Hush," he said. "There are faults too noble to be accounted faults.
But--if you think you were at all to blame--you must atone, by truly and
faithfully helping in my fight to root up the Upas tree."

"Ronnie," she said, "a pair of baby hands will help us both. We must
learn to live life at its highest, for the sake of our little son."

Then, knowing he had endured as much heart-searching as a man could bear
and be the better for it, she said, smiling:

"Ronnie, his funny little hands are so absurdly like yours."

"Like _mine_?" repeated Ronnie, as one awaking slowly from a sad dream,
to a blissful reality. "Why are they like mine?"

"Because he is a tiny miniature of you, you dear, silly old boy! You do
not seem to understand that you are actually a father, Ronnie, with a
little son of your own!"

She looked up into his worn face, and saw the young glad joy of life
creep slowly back into it.

"And his mouth, darling--his little mouth is just like yours; only, as
I told you in the letter, when I kiss it--it does not kiss back,
Ronnie."

"What?" cried Ronnie. "What?" Then he understood; and, this time, it was
no mirage. Ronnie's desert wanderings were over.

* * * * *

"But don't you want to see your son?" Helen asked, presently.

Ronnie leapt up.

"See him? Why, of course I do! Oh, come on!... Helen! What does one say
to a very young baby?"

Helen followed him upstairs, laughing.

"That entirely depends upon circumstances. One usually says: 'Did it?'
'Is it then?' or 'Was it?' But I almost think present conditions require
a more definite statement of fact. I fancy one would say: 'How do you
do, baby? _I_ am your papa!' ... This way, Ronnie, in my own old
nurseries. Oh, darling, I am afraid I am going to cry! But you must not
mind. They will only be tears of unutterable joy. Think what it will be
to me, to see my baby in his father's arms!"

CHAPTER XX

GOOD-NIGHT TO THE INFANT OF P