is--how it seemed
to be a justification of what I did on the night before Martin left
Ellan, as if God, knowing he would not return, had prompted me, so that
when my dark hour came I might have this great hope for my comforter.

And oh how wonderful it was, how strange, how mysterious, how joyful!

Every day and all day and always I was conscious of my unborn child, as
a fluttering bird held captive in the hand. The mystery and the joy of
the coming life soothed away my sorrow, and if I had shed any tears they
would have dried them.

And then the future!

I seemed to know from the first that it was to be a girl, and already I
could see her face and look into her sea-blue eyes. As she grew up I
would talk to her of her father--the brave explorer, the man of destiny,
who laid down his life in a great work for the world. We should always
be talking of him--we two alone together, because he belonged to us and
nobody else in the world besides. Everything I have written here I
should tell her--at least the beautiful part of it, the part about our
love, which nothing in life, and not even death itself, could quench.

Oh the joy of those days! It may seem strange that I should have been so
happy so soon after my bereavement, but I cannot help it if it was so,
and it _was_ so.

Perhaps it was a sort of hysteria, due to the great change in my
physical condition. I do not know. I do not think I want to know. But
one thing is sure--that hope and prayer and the desire of life awoke in
me again, as by the touch of God's own hand, and I became another and a
happier woman.

Such was the condition in which Mildred found me when she returned a few
days later. Then she brought me down plump to material matters. We had
first to consider the questions of ways and means, in order to find out
how to face the future.

It was the beginning of January, my appointed time was in June, and I
had only some sixteen pounds of my money left, so it was clear that I
could not stay in the boarding-house much longer.

Happily Mildred knew of homes where women could live inexpensively
during their period of waiting. They were partly philanthropic and
therefore subject to certain regulations, which my resolute
determination (not to mention Martin's name, or permit it to be
mentioned) might make it difficult for me to observe, but Mildred hoped
to find one that would take me on her recommendation without asking
further question.

In this expectat