I can't get over it. I can't. I've tried, Edith."

He sat back on the floor and looked at her.

"I can't," he repeated. "And when I saw you like that just now, with the
kid in your arms--I used to think that maybe you and I--"

"I know, Joe. No decent man would want me now."

She was still strangely composed, peaceful, almost detached.

"That!" he said, astonished. "I don't mean that, Edith. I've had my
fight about that, and got it over. That's done with. I mean--" he got up
and straightened himself. "You don't care about me."

"But I do care for you. Perhaps not quite the way you care, Joe, but
I've been through such a lot. I can't seem to feel anything terribly. I
just want peace."

"I could give you that," he said eagerly.

Edith smiled. Peace, in that noisy house next door, with children and
kittens and puppies everywhere! And yet it would be peace, after all,
a peace of the soul, the peace of a good man's love. After a time, too,
there might come another peace, the peace of those tired women in the
ward, rocking.

"If you want me, I'll marry you," she said, very simply. "I'll be a good
wife, Joe. And I want children. I want the right to have them."

He never noticed that the kiss she gave him, over the sleeping baby, was
slightly tinged with granulated sugar.

CHAPTER LI

OLD Anthony's body had been brought home, and lay in state in his great
bed. There had been a bad hour; death seems so strangely to erase faults
and leave virtues. Something strong and vital had gone from the house,
and the servants moved about with cautious, noiseless steps. In Grace's
boudoir, Howard was sitting, his arms around his wife, telling her the
story of the day. At dawn he had notified her by telephone of Akers'
murder.

"Shall I tell Lily?" she had asked, trembling.

"Do you want to wait until I get back?"

"I don't know how she will take it, Howard. I wish you could be here,
anyhow."

But then had come the battle and his father's death, and in the end it
was Willy Cameron who told her. He had brought back all that was mortal
of Anthony Cardew, and, having seen the melancholy procession up the
stairs, had stood in the hall, hating to intrude but hoping to be
useful. Howard found him there, a strange, disheveled figure, bearing
the scars of battle, and held out his hand.

"It's hard to thank you, Cameron," he said; "you seem to be always
about when we need help. And"--he paused--"we seem to have needed it
c