watched
that hurried little romance at Kestrel, but by dint of charity and
blurred meditations it was easy for her to imagine the marriage ceremony
which would and should have taken place; and she was zealous that other
people should imagine it too. It was so much more regular and natural
like that, and "her" baby invested with his proper dignity. She went
downstairs to get a "cup o' tea," thinking: 'A picture they make--that
they do, bless his little heart; and his pretty little mother--no more
than a child, all said and done.'

Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light, absorbed
in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes, she saw in a
mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by the door. She could
hear him breathing as if the ascent of the stairs had tired him; and
moving to the head of the cot, she rested her hand on it, and turned her
face towards him. He came up and stood beside her, looking silently down
at the baby. She saw him make the sign of the Cross above it, and the
movement of his lips in prayer. Love for her father, and rebellion
against this intercession for her perfect baby fought so hard in the
girl's heart that she felt suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that he
could not see her eyes. Then he took her hand and put it to his lips, but
still without a word; and for the life of her she could not speak either.
In silence, he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden
passion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby. She put
her finger down and touched one of his hands. The tiny sleeping fingers
uncurled and, like some little sea anemone, clutched round it. She heard
her father draw his breath in; saw him turn away quickly, silently, and
go out. And she stayed, hardly breathing, with the hand of her baby
squeezing her finger.

II

1

When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit nursery,
he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside his bed,
absorbed in the vision he had seen. That young figure in Madonna blue,
with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the fine dusk; the
silence, the adoration in that white room! He saw, too; a vision of the
past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping babe within her mother's
arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering and giving praise. It
passed with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which belongs to
beauty, passed and left