e would not like Nicky to make so great a
sacrifice. Nicky, she said, was wrapped up in his Moving Fortress. It
was his sweetheart, his baby. "He will never forgive me," she said, "as
long as he lives. But I simply had to let you know. It means so much
to him."

For she thought, "Because Nicky's a fool, I needn't be one."

Drayton came over the same evening after he had got the letter. He
shouted with laughter.

"Nicky," he said, "you filthy rotter, why on earth didn't you tell
me?... It _was_ Nickyish of you.... What if I did think of it first? I
should have had to come to you for the details. It would have been jolly
to have worked it out together.... Not a bit of it! Your wife's
absolutely right. Good thing, after all, you married her.

"By the way, she says there's a model. I want to see that model. Have
you got it here?"

Nicky went up into the studio to look for it. He couldn't find it in the
locker where he'd left it. "Wherever is the damned thing?" he said.

"The damned thing," said Desmond, "is where you should have sent it
first of all--at the War Office. You're clever, Nicky, but you aren't
quite clever enough."

"I'm afraid," he said, "_you've_ been a bit too clever, this time."

Drayton agreed with him. It was, he said, about the worst thing that
could possibly have happened.

"She shouldn't have done that, Nicky. What on earth could have made her
do it?"

"Don't ask me," said Nicky, "what makes her do things."

"It looks," Drayton meditated, "as if she didn't trust me. I'm afraid
she's dished us. God knows whether we can ever get it back!"

Desmond had a fit of hysterics when she realized how clever she had
been.

* * * * *

Desmond's baby was born late in November of that year, and it died when
it was two weeks old. It was as if she had not wanted it enough to give
it life for long outside her body.

For though Desmond had been determined to have a child, and had declared
that she had a perfect right to have one if she chose, she did not care
for it when it came. And when it died Nicky was sorrier than Desmond.

He had not wanted to be a father to Headley Richards' child. And yet it
was the baby and nothing but the baby that had let him in for marrying
Desmond. So that, when it died, he felt that somehow things had tricked
and sold him. As they had turned out he need not have married Desmond
after all.

She herself had pointed out the extreme futility o