line where young Vereker had planted it, when, as by a miracle,
he sent it backwards over his own head, paralysing Vereker and Parsons
with sheer astonishment, that was John.

* * * * *

Her vision passed. She was leaning over Nicky now, Nicky so small in the
big bed. Nicky had moaned.

"Does it count if I make that little noise, Mummy? It sort of lets the
pain out."

"No, my lamb, it doesn't count. Is the pain very bad?"

"Yes, Mummy, awful. It's going faster and faster. And it bizzes. And
when it doesn't bizz, it thumps." He paused--"I think--p'raps--I could
bear it better if I sat on your knee."

Frances thought she could bear it better too. It would be good for Nicky
that he should grow into beautiful adolescence and a perfect manhood;
but it was better for her that he should be a baby still, that she
should have him on her knee and hold him close to her; that she should
feel his adorable body press quivering against her body, and the heat of
his earache penetrating her cool flesh. For now she was lost to herself
and utterly absorbed in Nicky. And her agony became a sort of ecstasy,
as if, actually, she bore his pain.

It was Anthony who could not stand it. Anthony had come in on his way to
his dressing-room. As he looked at Nicky his handsome, hawk-like face
was drawn with a dreadful, yearning, ineffectual pity. Frances had
discovered that her husband could both be and look pathetic. He had
wanted her to be sorry for him and she was sorry for him, because his
male pity was all agony; there was no ecstasy in it of any sort at all.
Nicky was far more her flesh and blood than he was Anthony's.

Nicky stirred in his mother's lap. He raised his head. And when he saw
that queer look on his father's face he smiled at it. He had to make the
smile himself, for it refused to come of its own accord. He made it
carefully, so that it shouldn't hurt him. But he made it so well that it
hurt Frances and Anthony.

"I never saw a child bear pain as Nicky does," Frances said in her
pride.

"If he can bear it, _I_ can't," said Anthony. And he stalked into his
dressing-room and shut the door on himself.

"Daddy minds more than you do," said Frances.

At that Nicky sat up. His eyes glittered and his cheeks burned with the
fever of his earache.

"I don't mind," he said. "Really and truly I don't mind. I don't care if
my ear _does_ ache.

"It's my eyes is crying, not me."

*