ia
Winter appeared so adorable as when she bent low over the fat baby,
and murmured to it the small feckless loving things that all women
always have murmured to all the babies in the world. She touched its
outflung hand delicately with a finger, and lingered there, filled
with woman's world-old want. And out of the twilight Marie sent a
whisper which reached them both.

"Of course, you're never going to marry, either of you. But if you
ever want to, and you're hanging back, wondering, just don't wonder.
Remember that the children are worth--everything."

"Thank you," Rokeby whispered fervently in her ear.

Julia said nothing, but straightened herself and passed out.

Rokeby was after her in a second to hold her coat. The way in which
she turned her back on him so that he might lift it on was peculiarly
ungracious.

Marie was in the background, wanting a lover again. When they had gone
she drew back the curtains, threw up the windows, and leaned out into
the sweet, chill spring night. She drank it and loved it, and all her
being cried out for love.

But she did not want love grown old, which came in and put on its
slippers, and grumped: "Can't those kids keep quiet?" if it heard the
voice of the children of love, and which hid itself behind a hedge of
daily paper, or flung out again from home, in the ill-tempered
senility of its second childhood.

She wanted love new-grown; with a bloom upon it, fresh and young; love
at its beginning, before it was ripe and over-ripe, and spoiling and
falling from its tree; such a love as she imagined Julia and Desmond
even then to be driving towards.

In a taxicab--for where else in all London could he be alone with
her?--Rokeby was taking Julia home. She allowed it in spite of
herself; yet was angry with them both for the circumstance which
brought them together close, which enclosed them in a privacy which
made her remember, with a vividness which disturbed her, the
sensations of that first and only kiss. He was asking her again:

"Haven't you changed your mind, Julia? Can't you relent?"

"You know what I think about marrying."

"I thought I did. But to-night when I looked at you looking at those
kids, I knew differently. You want to be married and have children of
your own. I don't know as much about me--don't know," he said in a
slight break of despair, "that I come into the picture much."

It was dark enough to hide her flush.

"When I ask 'Can't you relent'?" sai