oldier, Hughie burst
into tears, and could scarce be comforted. Grimm was safer; it seemed
doubtful whether Andersen was really a child's book at all, every page
touched with the tears of things, every line melodious with sadness.

And all this fostering of the imagination--was it right? was it wise?
Harvey worried himself with doubts insoluble. He had merely obeyed his
own instincts. But perhaps he would be doing far better if he never
allowed the child to hear a fairy-tale or a line of poetry. Why not
amuse his mind with facts, train him to the habit of scientific
thought? For all he knew, he might be giving the child a bias which
would result in a life's unhappiness; by teaching him to see only the
hard actual face of things, would he not fit him far more surely for
citizenship of the world?

He would have liked to talk about the child with Mary Abbott, but there
never came an opportunity. Though it shamed and angered him to be under
such constraint, he felt obliged to avoid any private meeting with her.
Alma, he well understood, still nursed the preposterous jealousy which
had been in her mind so long; and in the present state of things,
dubious, transitional, it behoved him to give no needless occasion of
disquiet. As the months went on, he saw her spirits fail; with the
utmost difficulty she was persuaded to leave the house, and for hours
at a time she sat as if in melancholy brooding, unwilling to talk or to
read. Harvey tried reading to her, but in the daytime she could not
keep her thoughts from wandering, and after dinner it merely sent her
to sleep. Yet she declared that there was nothing to trouble about; she
would be herself again before long.

But one day the doctor who was attending her had a few words in private
with Rolfe, and told him that he had made an unpleasant discovery--Mrs
Rolfe was in the habit of taking a narcotic. At first, when the doctor
asked if this was the case, she had denied it, but in the end he had
elicited a confession, and a promise that the dangerous habit should be
relinquished.

'I was on no account to mention this to you, and you mustn't let it be
seen that I have done so. If it goes on, and I'm rather afraid it will
for a short time, I shall tell her that you must be informed of it.'

Harvey, to whom such a suspicion had never occurred, waited anxiously
for the doctor's further reports. As was anticipated, Alma's promise
held good only for a day or two, and when again she