yself. If only I could be invisible,
and steal into the house at times and sit me down in a corner and
watch their faces and listen! That would be enough, brother: I
don't ask to join in that life again--only to stand apart and feed my
eyes on it."

"You are not happy, then?"

"Happy?" She mused for a while. "My man is kind to me: kinder than I
deserve. If God gives us a child--" She broke off, lowered her eyes
and stammered, "You heard that I had--that one was born! Dead.
He never breathed, the doctor told me. I ought to be glad, for _his_
sake--and for William's--but I cannot be."

"It was God's goodness. Look at Sukey, now; how much of her time her
children take up."

She drew back sharply and peered at him through the dusk.

"Now that time is restored to you," he went on, "you have nothing to
do but to serve God without distraction, till you are sanctified in
body, soul and spirit."

"Jacky, dear," she asked hoarsely, "have they taught you at Oxford to
speak like that?"

He was offended, and showed it. "I have been speaking up for you;
too warmly for my comfort. Father and mother, and indeed all but
Molly, will have it that you talked lightly to them; that your
penitence was feigned. I would not believe this, but that, as by
marriage you redeemed your conduct, so now you must be striving to
redeem your soul. If you deny this, I have been in error and must
tell them so."

For a while she stood considering. "Brother," she said, "I will be
plain with you. Since this marriage was forced upon me, I have
tried--and, please God, I will go on trying--to redeem my conduct.
But of my soul I scarcely think at all."

"Hetty, this is monstrous."

"I pray," she went on, "for help to be good. With tears I pray for
it, and all day long I am trying to be good and do my duty. As for
my soul, sometimes I wake and see the need to be anxious for it, and
resolve to think of it anxiously: but when the morning comes, I have
no time--the day is too full. And sometimes I grow rebellious and
vow that it is no affair of mine: let them answer for it who took it
in charge and drove me to tread this path. And sometimes I tell
myself that once I had a soul, and it was sinful; but that God was
merciful and destroyed it, with its record, when He destroyed my
baby. The doctor swore to me that it never drew a separate breath;
no, not one. Tell me, Jack! A child that has never breathed can
know neither heaven nor he