children already stood in a weeping group.

'Oh, mother!' cried the daughters, almost in hysterics, weeping loudly.

But the mother went forward. The dead man lay in repose, as if gently
asleep, so gently, so peacefully, like a young man sleeping in purity.
He was still warm. She stood looking at him in gloomy, heavy silence,
for some time.

'Ay,' she said bitterly, at length, speaking as if to the unseen
witnesses of the air. 'You're dead.' She stood for some minutes in
silence, looking down. 'Beautiful,' she asserted, 'beautiful as if life
had never touched you--never touched you. God send I look different. I
hope I shall look my years, when I am dead. Beautiful, beautiful,' she
crooned over him. 'You can see him in his teens, with his first beard
on his face. A beautiful soul, beautiful--' Then there was a tearing in
her voice as she cried: 'None of you look like this, when you are dead!
Don't let it happen again.' It was a strange, wild command from out of
the unknown. Her children moved unconsciously together, in a nearer
group, at the dreadful command in her voice. The colour was flushed
bright in her cheek, she looked awful and wonderful. 'Blame me, blame
me if you like, that he lies there like a lad in his teens, with his
first beard on his face. Blame me if you like. But you none of you
know.' She was silent in intense silence.

Then there came, in a low, tense voice: 'If I thought that the children
I bore would lie looking like that in death, I'd strangle them when
they were infants, yes--'

'No, mother,' came the strange, clarion voice of Gerald from the
background, 'we are different, we don't blame you.'

She turned and looked full in his eyes. Then she lifted her hands in a
strange half-gesture of mad despair.

'Pray!' she said strongly. 'Pray for yourselves to God, for there's no
help for you from your parents.'

'Oh mother!' cried her daughters wildly.

But she had turned and gone, and they all went quickly away from each
other.

When Gudrun heard that Mr Crich was dead, she felt rebuked. She had
stayed away lest Gerald should think her too easy of winning. And now,
he was in the midst of trouble, whilst she was cold.

The following day she went up as usual to Winifred, who was glad to see
her, glad to get away into the studio. The girl had wept, and then, too
frightened, had turned aside to avoid any more tragic eventuality. She
and Gudrun resumed work as usual, in the isolation of the studi