m; where the lean and
smutted houses have a look of dissolution indefinitely put off, and there
is no more trace of beauty than in a sewer. Gyp, leaning forward, looked
out, as one does after a long sea voyage; Winton felt her hand slip into
his and squeeze it hard.

That evening after dinner--in the room he had furnished for her mother,
where the satinwood chairs, the little Jacobean bureau, the old brass
candelabra were still much as they had been just on thirty years ago--she
said:

"Dad, I've been thinking. Would you mind if I could make a sort of home
at Mildenham where poor children could come to stay and get good air and
food? There are such thousands of them."

Strangely moved by this, the first wish he had heard her express since
the tragedy, Winton took her hand, and, looking at it as if for answer to
his question, said:

"My dear, are, you strong enough?"

"Quite. There's nothing wrong with me now except here." She drew his
hand to her and pressed it against her heart. "What's given, one can't
get back. I can't help it; I would if I could. It's been so dreadful
for you. I'm so sorry." Winton made an unintelligible sound, and she
went on: "If I had them to see after, I shouldn't be able to think so
much; the more I had to do the better. Good for our gipsy-bird, too, to
have them there. I should like to begin it at once."

Winton nodded. Anything that she felt could do her good--anything!

"Yes, yes," he said; "I quite see--you could use the two old cottages to
start with, and we can easily run up anything you want."

"Only let me do it all, won't you?"

At that touch of her old self, Winton smiled. She should do everything,
pay for everything, bring a whole street of children down, if it would
give her any comfort!

"Rosamund'll help you find 'em," he muttered. "She's first-rate at all
that sort of thing." Then, looking at her fixedly, he added: "Courage,
my soul; it'll all come back some day."

Gyp forced herself to smile. Watching her, he understood only too well
the child's saying: "Mum lives away somewhere, I think."

Suddenly, she said, very low:

"And yet I wouldn't have been without it."

She was sitting, her hands clasped in her lap, two red spots high in her
cheeks, her eyes shining strangely, the faint smile still on her lips.
And Winton, staring with narrowed eyes, thought: 'Love! Beyond
measure--beyond death--it nearly kills. But one wouldn't have been
without it