up to her, "to see you and
Desmond as Osborn and I once were."

"And as you want to be again, my dear, if you only knew it."

"It's too late for that."

"Marie, what do you mean?"

"I told him to make his own life. I'm not a dog-in-the-manger woman,
anyway. What I don't want I'll give away freely."

"What can you mean?"

"I've given him away." The knowledge that had come upon her in the car
that Saturday afternoon made her voice grim. "He's gone elsewhere,"
she said; "I feel it; I know it. A wife can sense these things as a
barometer senses rain."

"Oh, Marie!" Julia whispered, and for a while there was silence in the
room, broken only by the chuckles of the baby-girl. Both women looked
down, at the sound, upon the fluffy head and Julia asked, still in a
bated whisper:

"What do you think you'll do?"

"Nothing," said Marie, "above all, nothing. The children will keep us
under the same roof. We shall be like thousands of other married
people, privately free; publicly tied up tight together in the same
dear old knot."

Her brief laugh trembled.

"Marie, you know you think it _is_ a dear old knot."

Marie did not reply. After awhile she said:

"We're not coming to dinner with you for a very long while. This
morning I've come nearer hating you, Julia, than I've ever done in our
lives. I want to hate you because you're so happy; because you've got
the love which I want but can never have again."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Sure, my dear? Sure as the world. You can't have that kind of love
without giving a return, and I've none to give. It's dead; gone; dried
up. I don't know where it is. But perhaps there's a root of it left
somewhere--enough to make me envy you."

Ann the maid entered to fetch the baby to be dressed for outdoors, and
Julia received the hint sorrowfully.

"Isn't there anything Desmond and I could do?" she asked, as she stood
up and muffled her furs about her throat.

"There's nothing anyone can do."

"I wanted to talk about a lot of things--ask you about your fortunes,
and everything, darling; but this has driven it all clean out of my
head."

"Our fortunes are on the upgrade, thanks, Julia. Never again will I
spoil my hands and let my teeth and hair go; it's all over--that part
of it."

Julia kissed Marie very tenderly, as she used to do. "I shall come
again soon," she called with an anxious vivacity, as she waved her
muff in a good-bye signal from a bend in the cold grey stair