have objected to
Jane's hair. But there was Jane's delicacy. An alarming tendency to
waste, and an incessant, violent, inveterate screaming proclaimed him
her son, the heir of an unstable nervous system.

Jane's time and what strength she had were divided between her sick
child and Mabel Brodrick.

For in this dreadful year Mabel had become worse. Her malady had
declared itself. There were rumours and hushed hints of a possible
operation. Henry was against it; he doubted whether she would survive
the shock. It was not to be thought of at present; not as long as
things, he said, remained quiescent.

John Brodrick, as he waited, had grown greyer; he was gentler also and
less important, less visibly the unsurprised master of the expected. The
lines on his face had multiplied and softened in an expression as of
wonder why this unspeakable thing should have happened to him of all men
and to his wife of all women. Poor Mabel who had never done anything----

That was the way they put it now among themselves, Mabel's shortcoming.
She had never done anything to deserve this misery. Lying on her couch
in the square, solid house in Augustus Road, Wimbledon, Mabel covered
her nullity with the imperial purple of her doom. In the family she was
supreme by divine right of suffering.

Again, every day, Jane trod the path over the Heath to Wimbledon. And
sometimes Henry found her at John's house and drove her back in his
motor (he had a motor now). Once, boxed up with him in the closed car
(it was March and the wind was cold over the Heath), she surprised him
with a question.

"Henry, is it true that if Mabel had had children she'd have been all
right?"

"Yes," he said curtly, wondering what on earth had made her ask him
that.

"It's killing her then--not having them?"

"That," he said, "and the desire to have them."

"How cruel it is, how detestable--that she should have _this_----"

"It's Nature's revenge, Jane, on herself."

"And she was so sweet, she would have loved them----"

The Doctor brooded. He had a thing to say to her.

"Jinny, if you'd put it away--altogether--that writing of yours--you'd
be a different woman."

"Different?"

"You'd be happier. And, what's more, you'd be well, too. Perfectly
well."

"This is not the advice I should give you," he went on, addressing her
silence, "if you were an unmarried woman. I urge my unmarried patients
to work--to use their brains all they can--and married ones, t