on
parting; before he could ask mutely for the salute she was on her way
back to the breakfast-table.

She sat there some while after he had gone, comfortably finishing her
own meal, which had been interrupted by attendance on the children, as
if deliberately determining that Osborn's return should interfere in
no whit with her recent ease. Only when she was quite ready, with no
hurry and at her own pleasure, did she start out to the Heath to give
the children their morning airing.

"Mummie," said Minna, "George said Daddy has promised to bring us some
toys."

"That's very kind of Daddy, isn't it?"

She walked thoughtfully. "Things have changed," she said to herself,
"I suppose money has changed them. It always can." She thought this
with a certain enjoyment, yet down underneath, where that stony organ
which used to be her heart lay, she knew that she wanted, more than
thousands and thousands of pounds, the light and life of that first
year over again. What joy was like the birth of such love? Or what
regret like the death of it?

Their walk on the Heath lasted till eleven o'clock, when she returned
to put the children under the charge of the maid. She was meticulous
in her instructions for their care and requirements, almost passionate
in her loving good-byes to them. Truly no one, she thought again, as
their arms clung about her neck, could know all that they had been to
her, how heavenly kind they were.

Minna, admiring her mother's clothes, walked with her to the door and
waved her down the bleak staircase.

It was precisely one o'clock when Marie Kerr entered the lounge of the
big restaurant, where she had waited some while for Osborn on a
birthday evening which she remembered keenly this morning. But this
time he was there before her, waiting anxious and alert, like a lover
for the lady of his affections. He had booked a table and upon it, as
she sat down, she saw, laid beside her cover, a big bunch of her
favourite violets, blue and dewy.

"You still like them best?" he asked.

"Still faithful," she smiled back lightly and, when she had thrown
open her coat, she pinned them at her breast.

She looked around her unafraid.

Her clothes were good; her hair was burnished; her hands were white;
her man worshipped like the other women's men.

She was once more, after that long, that humble and tearful
abdication, at the zenith of her power.

* * * * *

They did not ri