self as chill critical
impartiality, that he was adding her up with clear-sighted shrewdness...
And then she was a mother! That meant a mysterious, a mystic
perfecting! For him, it was as if among all women she alone had been a
mother--so special was his view of the influence of motherhood upon her.
He drew together all the beauty of an experience almost universal,
transcendentalised it, and centred it on one being. And he was
disturbed, baffled, agitated by the effect of the secret workings of his
own unsuspected emotion. He was made sad, and sadder. He wanted to
right wrongs, to efface from hearts the memory of grief, to create
bliss; and he knew that this could never be done. He now saw Hilda
exclusively as a victim, whose misfortunes were innumerable. Imagine
this creature, with her passion for Victor Hugo, obliged by
circumstances to polish a brass door-plate surreptitiously at night!
Imagine her solitary in the awful house--with the broker's man! Imagine
her forced to separate herself from her child! Imagine the succession
of disasters that had soured her and transformed seriousness into
harshness and acridity! ... And within that envelope, what a soul must
be burning!

"And when he begins to grow--he's scarcely begun to grow yet," Hilda
continued about her offspring, "then he will reed all his strength!"

"Yes, he will," Edwin concurred heartily.

He wanted to ask her, "Why did you call him Edwin for his second name?
Was it his father's name, or your father's, or did you insist on it
yourself, because?" But he could not ask. He could ask nothing. He
could not even ask why she had jilted him without a word. He knew
naught, and evidently she was determined to give no information. She
might at any rate have explained how she had come to meet Janet, and
under what circumstances Janet had taken possession of the child. All
was a mystery. Her face, when he avoided the lamp, shone in the midst
of a huge dark cloud of impenetrable mystery. She was too proud to
reveal anything whatever. The grand pride in her forbade her even to
excuse her conduct to himself. A terrific woman!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOUR.

Silence fell. His constraint was excruciating. She too was nervous,
tapping the table and creaking her chair. He could not speak.

"Shall you be going back to Bursley soon?" she demanded. In her voice
was desperation.

"Oh yes!" he sai