once very ill as a child,--ill like this, ill like my
child. I want you to tell me honestly if that is true? I mean, were you
very, very ill?"

He answered her in the same way, without preamble, baldly: "It is quite
true," he said. "I was very ill--so ill that my mother for one moment
thought that I was dead. But remember, Fanny, that in those days they
did not know nearly as much as they do now. Your boy has two chances for
every one that I had then."

"Would you mind coming in and seeing him?" Her voice faltered, it had
become more human, more conventional, in quality.

"Of course I will see him," he said. "I want to see him,--dear." She
had suddenly become to him once more the thing nearest his heart; once
more the link between them became of the closest, most intimate nature,
and yet, or perhaps because of its intensity, the sense of nearness
which had sprung at her touch into being was passionless.

The face which had been drained of all expression quickened into
agonized feeling. She tried to withdraw her hand from his, but he held
it firmly, and it was hand in hand that together they walked into the
room.

As they came round the screen behind which lay the sick child, Bellair
went over to the farthest of the three windows and stood there with
crossed arms staring out into the night.

The little boy lay on his right side, and as they moved round to the
edge of the large cot, Elwyn, with a sudden tightening of the throat,
became aware that the child was neither asleep nor, as he in his
ignorance had expected to find him, sunk in stupor or delirium. But the
small, dark face, framed by the white pillow, was set in lines of deep,
unchildlike gravity, and in the eyes which now gazed incuriously at
Elwyn there was a strange, watchful light which seemed to illumine that
which was within rather than that which was without.

As is always the case with a living creature near to death, little
Peter Bellair looked very lonely.

Then Elwyn, moving nearer still, seemed--or so at least Fanny Bellair
will ever believe--to take possession of the moribund child, yielding
him as he did so something of his own strength to help him through the
crisis then imminent. And indeed the little creature whose forehead,
whose clenched left hand lying on the sheet were beginning to glisten
with sweat, appeared to become merged in some strange way with himself.
Merged, not with the man he was to-day, but with the Hugh Elwyn of
thirty y