d in the thin September
sunlight, among the blossoming roses, she somehow suggested the calm
placidity of a nun who looks back at her days in the world with a
tender, smiling pity. The child had left her play, and stood close to
her mother's side, one of Julia's hands caught in both her own.

"Anna," Jim said desperately, "won't you ask Mother to come to London
with Dad?"

Anna regarded him gravely. She did not understand the situation, but she
answered, with a child's curious instinct for the obvious excuse:

"But Grandmother needs her!"

"I never asked you to give her up, Julie," Jim said, as if trying to
remind her that he had not been so merciless as she. Julia's eyes
widened with a quick alarm, her breast rose, but she answered
composedly:

"That I would have fought."

"And you have always had as much money--" Jim began again, trying to
rally the arguments with which he had felt sure to overwhelm her.

"I spent that as much for your sake as for mine," Julia said soberly.
"She is a Studdiford. I wanted to be fair to Anna. But I could do
without it now, Jim; there are a thousand things--"

"Yes, I know!" he said in quick shame.

A silence fell, there seemed nothing else to be said. A great space
widened between them. Jim felt at the mercy of lonely and desolate
winds; he felt as if all colour had faded out of the world, leaving it
gray and cold. With the sickness of utter defeat he dropped on one knee
and kissed the wondering child, and then turned to go.

"You won't--change your mind, Ju?" he asked huskily.

Julia was conscious of a strange weakening and loosening of bonds
throughout her entire system. Vague chills shook her, she felt that
tears were near, she had a hideous misgiving as to her power to keep
from fainting.

"I will let you know, Jim," she heard her own voice answer, very low.

A moment later she and Anna were alone in the garden.

"What _is_ it, Mother?" Anna asked curiously, a dozen times. Julia stood
staring at the child blindly. One hand was about Anna's neck, the loose
curls falling soft and warm upon it, the other Julia had pressed tight
above her heart. She stood still as if listening.

"What _is_ it, Mother?" asked the little girl again.

"Nothing!" Julia said then, in a sort of shallow whisper, with a caught
breath.

A second later she kissed the child hastily, and went quietly out of the
green gate which had so lately closed upon Jim. She went as
unquestioningly as an a