you will change your mind and marry her after all, because if you do,
she'll love her baby, too, and look forward to it very much. But if you
don't, she'll hate her baby. And it would be a dreadful thing for the
poor little baby to come into the world hated."

To Waldron's intense relief Raymond showed no annoyance whatever. He was
gentle and smiled at Estelle.

"So it would, Chicky--it would be a dreadful thing for a baby to come
into the world hated. But don't you worry. Nobody's going to hate it."

"I'll tell Sabina that. Sabina's sure to have a nice baby, because she's
so nice herself."

"Sure to. And I shall be a very good friend to the baby without marrying
Sabina."

"If she knows that, it ought to comfort her," declared Estelle. "And I
shall be a great friend to it, too."

Her father bade the child be off on an errand presently and expressed
his regrets to the guest when she was gone.

"Awfully sorry, old chap, but she's so unearthly and simple; and though
I've often told myself to preach to her, I never can quite do it."

"Never do. She'll learn to hide her thoughts soon enough. Nothing she
can say would annoy me. For that matter she's only saying what a great
many other people are thinking and haven't the pluck to say. The truth
is this, Arthur; when I was a poor man I was a weak man, and I should
have married Sabina and we should both have had a hell of a life, no
doubt. Now the death of Daniel has made me a strong man, and I'm not
doing wrong as the result; I'm doing right. I can afford to do right and
not mind the consequences. And the truth about life is that half the
people who do wrong, only do it because they can't afford to do right."

"That's a comforting doctrine--for the poor."

"It's like this. Sabina is a very dear girl, and I loved her
tremendously, and if she'd gone on being the same afterwards, I should
have married her. But she changed, and I saw that we could never be
really happy together as man and wife. There are things in her that
would have ruined my temper, and there are things in me she would have
got to hate more and more. As a matter of brutal fact, Arthur, she got
to dislike me long before things came to a climax. She had to hide it,
because, from her standpoint and her silly mother's, marriage is the
only sort of salvation. Whereas for us it would have been damnation.
It's very simple; she's got to think as I think and then she'll be all
right."

"You can't make people