shoulders were a little stooped, he was greyer about the
temples. The little bit of cynicism which had appeared in that remark
about the care of the child showed also in the lines of his mouth; yet
his eyes had the same old true, honest look. But a man cannot be hit in
mortal places once or twice in his life without its being etched on his
face or dropped like a pinch of aloe from his tongue.

Still they sat and talked much longer, Frank showing better than when
his brother came, Richard gone grey and tired. At last Richard rose and
motioned towards the window. "See, Frank," he said, "it is morning."
Then he went and lifted the blind. The grey, unpurged air oozed on
the glass. The light was breaking over the tops of the houses. A
crossing-sweeper early to his task, or holding the key of the street,
went pottering by, and a policeman glanced up at them as he passed.
Richard drew down the curtain again.

"Dick," said Frank suddenly, "you look old. I wonder if I have changed
as much?"

Six months before, Frank Armour would have said hat his brother looked
young.

"Oh, you look young enough, Frank," was the reply. "But I am a good deal
older than I was five years ago... Come, let us go to bed."

CHAPTER X. THOU KNOWEST THE SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS

And Lali? How had the night gone for her? When she rose from the child's
cot, where her lips had caught the warmth that her husband had left on
them, she stood for a moment bewildered in the middle of the room. She
looked at the door out of which he had gone, her bosom beating hard, her
heart throbbing so that it hurt her--that she could have cried out from
mere physical pain. The wifedom in her was plundering the wild stores of
her generous soul for the man, for--as Richard had said that day,
that memorable day!--the father of her child. But the woman, the pure
translated woman, who was born anew when this frail life in its pink and
white glory crept out into the dazzling world, shrank back, as any girl
might shrink that had not known marriage. This child had come--from
what?--She shuddered now--how many times had she done so since she first
waked to the vulgar sacrilege of her marriage? She knew now that every
good mother, when her first child is born, takes it in her arms, and,
all her agony gone, and the ineffable peace of delivered motherhood
come, speaks the name of its father, and calls it his child. But--she
remembered it now--when her child was born, this little