orld and it widened the gulf forever.
Thereafter Norman and Ann lived in the lodge.

Ann was a wonderful mother and the boy as sturdy and handsome a little
lad as the mother-heart of any woman ever worshiped. But I! How easy
it had been to promise to make no particular advance of affection to my
son--to suggest in no way my claim upon him--to take up the thread of
my life again as if he had never been born--to regard myself merely as
the physical instrument necessary to his creation!

I was to learn with bitter suffering the truth that my act bound me
irrevocably in soul and heart to my boy and his mother.

I shall not forget the night when I faced the truth. It was in the
great room of the lodge, the blazing wood fire staining the bearskin
rugs. Outside, in the early twilight, there was wind, and trees hung
with snow, and the dull, frozen lap of a winter lake. I had come up to
the lodge at Norman's invitation. As far as he and Ann were concerned,
my claim upon Ann's boy was quite forgotten.

He had grown into a dark, ruddy, handsome little lad, this son of mine,
with a brain and body far beyond his years, thanks to Ann's marvelous
gift of motherhood, her care and her teaching.

Ann sat by the old, square piano singing some marvelous mother's
lullaby of the Norseland, her full contralto ringing with splendid
tenderness. Mother and son were alone when I entered. Carl was busily
at play on a rug by the fire.

In that instant, with the plaint of the Norse mother in my ears, I
knew. The tie was too strong to fight. I loved my little son--I loved
his mother.

I do not remember how I stumbled across the room and told her. I only
know that she was greatly shocked and troubled and very kind, that she
told me as gently as she could that I must try to conquer it all--that
there must be no one in Carl's life but herself--that man's part in the
scheme of creation was but the act of a moment; a woman's part, her
whole life.

I think now that her great love for the little chap had crowded
everything else out of her mind; that living up there in those snowy
acres of trees away from the world, she was so calmly contented and
happy that she feared an intrusive breath of any sort. And she did not
love me.

Suddenly in a moment of impulsive tenderness, she bent over and caught
Carl up in her arms.

"My little laddie!" she cried, her face glorified, and he nestled his
head in her full, beautiful throat and laughed.