onfounded him, yet he was afraid to answer. She pushed her head deep
into the pillow, and lay looking up at the ceiling.

"I shall have a son; Cyril won't quite have died. And I don't want to be
forgiven."

He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and feeling had
gone on in her to produce this hardened state of mind, which to him
seemed almost blasphemous. And in the very midst of this turmoil in his
heart, he could not help thinking how lovely her face looked, lying back
so that the curve of her throat was bared, with the short tendrils of
hair coiling about it. That flung-back head, moving restlessly from side
to side in the heat of the soft pillow, had such a passion of protesting
life in it! And he kept silence.

"I want you to know it was all me. But I can't pretend. Of course I'll
try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly can. I'm sorry for you,
poor Daddy; oh! I'm sorry for you!" With a movement incredibly lithe and
swift, she turned and pressed her face down in the pillow, so that all
he could see was her tumbled hair and the bedclothes trembling above her
shoulders. He tried to stroke that hair, but she shook her head free,
and he stole out.

She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched meal was over,
the mechanism of his professional life caught him again at once. New
Year's Day! He had much to do. He had, before all, to be of a cheerful
countenance before his flock, to greet all and any with an air of hope
and courage.

X

1

Thirza Pierson, seeing her brother-in-law's handwriting, naturally said:
"Here's a letter from Ted."

Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally responded:

"What does he say?"

In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one of the
most difficult tasks ever set her. Its news moved and disturbed her
deeply. Under her wing this disaster had happened! Down here had been
wrought this most deplorable miracle, fraught with such dislocation of
lives! Noel's face, absorbed and passionate, outside the door of her
room on the night when Cyril Morland went away--her instinct had been
right!

"He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob."

"Why not both of us?"

"He wants Nollie to come down to me; she's not well."

"Not well? What's the matter?"

To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty
to her husband. A simple consideration of fact and not of principle,
decided her. He would certai