quiet on
a footstool, thinking. "I fink," she said presently, "I'd better go and
tell daddy he isn't naughty, else he'll be dreff'ly unhappy."

And she trotted downstairs and up again.

"Daddy sends his love, mummy, and he _is_ busy. S'all I take your love to
him?"

That was how it went on, now Peggy was older. That was how she made her
mother's heart ache.

Anne was in terror for the time when Peggy would begin to see. For that,
and for her own inability to teach her the stupendous difference between
right and wrong.

But one day Peggy ran to her mother, crying as if her heart would break.

"Oh, muvver, muvver, kiss me," she sobbed. "I did kick daddy! Kiss me."

She flung her arms round Anne's knees, as if clinging for protection
against the pursuing vision of her sin.

"Hush, hush, darling," said Anne. "Perhaps daddy didn't mind."

But Peggy howled in agony. "Y-y-yes, he did. I hurted him, I hurted him.
He minded ever so."

"My little one," said Anne, "my little one!" and clung to her and
comforted her.

She saw that Peggy's little mind recognised no sin except the sin against
love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should
refuse to forgive her and kiss her.

And Anne did not refuse.

Thus her terror grew. If it was to come to Peggy that way, her knowledge
of the difference, what was Peggy to think when she grew older? When she
began to see?

That was how Anne grew soft.

Her very body was changing into the beauty of her motherhood. The
sweetness of her face, arrested in its hour of blossom, had unfolded and
flowered again. Her mouth had lost its sad droop, and for Peggy there
came many times laughter, and many times that lifting of the upper lip,
the gleam of the white teeth, and the play of the little amber mole that
Majendie loved and Anne was ashamed of.

She had become for her child that which she had been for her husband
in her strange, immortal moments of surrender, a woman warmed and
transfigured by a secret fire. Her new beauty remained, like a brooding
charm, when the child was not with her.

And as the seasons, passing, made her more and more a woman dear and
desirable, Majendie's passion for her became almost insane through its
frustration.

Anne was aware of the insanity without realising its cause. He avoided
her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew
his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from
her, he w