she
might again become as she had been; but he said that was impossible,
and smiled confidently, and all the time he was watching in agony for
the change.

"Do you forgive me, Grizel? I have always had a dread that when you
recovered you would cease to care for me." He knew that this would
please her if she was the real Grizel, and he was so anxious to make
her happy for evermore.

She put his hand to her lips and smiled at him through her tears. Hers
was a love that could never change. Suddenly she sat up. "Whose baby
was it?" she asked.

"I don't know what you mean, Grizel," he said uneasily.

"I remember vaguely," she told him, "a baby in white whom I seemed to
chase, but I could never catch her. Was it a dream only?"

"You are thinking of Elspeth's little girl, perhaps. She was often
brought to see you."

"Has Elspeth a baby?" She rose to go exultantly to Elspeth.

"But too small a baby, Grizel, to run from you, even if she wanted
to."

"What is she like?"

"She is always laughing."

"The sweet!" Grizel rocked her arms in rapture and smiled her crooked
smile at the thought of a child who was always laughing. "But I don't
remember her," she said. "It was a sad little baby I seemed to see."

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE LITTLE GODS RETURN WITH A LADY

Grizel's clear, searching eyes, that were always asking for the truth,
came back to her, and I seem to see them on me now, watching lest I
shirk the end.

Thus I can make no pretence (to please you) that it was a new Tommy at
last. We have seen how he gave his life to her during those eighteen
months, but he could not make himself anew. They say we can do it, so
I suppose he did not try hard enough; but God knows how hard he tried.

He went on trying. In those first days she sometimes asked him, "Did
you do it out of love, or was it pity only?" And he always said it was
love. He said it adoringly. He told her all that love meant to him,
and it meant everything that he thought Grizel would like it to mean.
When she ceased to ask this question he thought it was because he had
convinced her.

They had a honeymoon by the sea. He insisted upon it with boyish
eagerness, and as they walked on the links or sat in their room he
would exclaim ecstatically: "How happy I am! I wonder if there were
ever two people quite so happy as you and I!"

And if he waited for an answer, as he usually did, she might smile
lightly and say: "Few people have gone through so