leisure to contemplate this risk, hitherto scarce taken into account.
She spoke of it with Mary, the one friend to whom her heart went out
in absolute trust, from whom she concealed but few of her thoughts, and
whose moral worth, only understood since circumstances compelled her
reliance upon it, had set before her a new ideal of life. Mary, she well
knew, abhorred the deceit they were practising, and thought hard things
of the man who made it a necessity; so it did not surprise her that the
devoted woman showed no deep concern at a new danger.

'It's more the shame than anything else, that I fear now,' said Nancy.
'If I have to support myself and my child, I shall do it. How, I don't
know; but other women find a way, and I should. If he deserts me, I am
not such a poor creature as to grieve on that account; I should despise
him too much even to hate him. But the shame of it would be
terrible. It's common, vulgar cheating--such as you read of in the
newspapers--such as people are punished for. I never thought of it in
that way when he was here. Yet he felt it. He spoke of it like that, but
I wouldn't listen.'

Mary heard this with interest.

'Did he wish you to give it up?' she asked. 'You never told me that.'

'He said he would rather we did. But that was when he had never thought
of being in want himself. Afterwards--yes, even then he spoke in the
same way; but what could we do?'

'Don't fear that he will forsake you,' said Mary. 'You will hear from
him very soon. He knows the right and the wrong, and right will be
stronger with him in the end.'

'If only I were sure that he has heard of his child's birth. If he
_has_, and won't even write to me, then he is no man, and it's better we
should never see each other again.'

She knew the hours of postal delivery, and listened with throbbing heart
to the double knocks at neighbouring houses. When the last postman was
gone by, she sat down, sick with disappointment.

At bedtime she said to Mary, 'My little baby is asleep; oh, if I could
but see it for a moment!' And tears choked her as she turned away.

It was more than two months since she had heard from her husband.

At first Tarrant wrote as frequently as he had promised. She learnt
speedily of his arrival at New York, then that he had reached Nassau,
the capital of the Bahamas, then that he was with his friend Sutherland
on the little island amid the coral reefs. Subsequent letters, written
in buoyant spirit