tood beside her bed. She meant to keep that quiet look
for Mrs. Bray; but she fainted. Mrs. Bray, while she lay tumbled among
the pillows, and before lifting her, read the message hastily.

From the night of torment and the shock of joy, Amabel brought an
extreme susceptibility to emotion that showed itself through all her
life in a trembling of her hands and frame when any stress of feeling
was laid upon her.

After that torment and that shock she saw Bertram once, and only once,
again;--ah, strange and sad in her memory that final meeting of their
lives, though this miraculous news was the theme of it. She was still in
bed when he came, the bed she did not leave for months, and, though so
weak and dizzy, she understood all that he told her, knew the one
supreme fact of her husband's goodness. He sent her word that she was to
be troubled about nothing; she was to take everything easily and
naturally. She should always have her child with her and it should bear
his name. He would see after it like a father; it should never know that
he was not its father. And, as soon as she would let him, he would come
and see her--and it. Amabel, lying on her pillows, gazed and gazed: her
eyes, in their shadowy hollows, were two dark wells of sacred wonder.
Even Bertram felt something of the wonder of them. In his new gladness
and relief, he was very kind to her. He came and kissed her. She seemed,
once more, a person whom one could kiss. "Poor dear," he said, "you have
had a lot to bear. You do look dreadfully ill. You must get well and
strong, now, Amabel, and not worry any more, about anything. Everything
is all right. We will call the child Augustine, if it's a boy, after
mother's father you know, and Katherine, if it's a girl, after her
mother: I feel, don't you, that we have no right to use their own names.
But the further away ones seem right, now. Hugh is a trump, isn't he?
And, I'm sure of it, Amabel, when time has passed a little, and you feel
you can, he'll have you back; I do really believe it may be managed.
This can all be explained. I'm saying that you are ill, a nervous
breakdown, and are having a complete rest."

She heard him dimly, feeling these words irrelevant. She knew that Hugh
must never have her back; that she could never go back to Hugh; that her
life henceforth was dedicated. And yet Bertram was kind, she felt that,
though dimly feeling, too, that her old image of him had grown
tarnished. But her mind was