hings, which belongs to your generation."

By this time the wife had reached the door. She turned and held out her
arms for the child. General Armour came and placed the boy where he
had found it, and, with eyes suddenly filling, laid both his hands upon
Lali's and they clasped the child, and said: "It is worth while to have
lived so long and to have seen so much." Her eyes met his in a wistful,
anxious expression, shifted to those of her husband, dropped to the
cheeks of the child, and with the whispered word, which no one, not even
the general, heard, she passed from the room, the nurse following her.

Perhaps some of the most striking contrasts are achieved in the least
melodramatic way. The sudden incursion of the child and its mother
into the group, the effect of their presence, and their soft departure,
leaving behind them, as it were, a trail of light, changed the whole
atmosphere of the room, as though some new life had been breathed into
it, charged each mind with new sensations, and gave each figure new
attitude. Not a man present but had had his full swing with the world,
none worse than most men, none better than most, save that each had
latent in him a good sense of honour concerning all civic and domestic
virtues. They were not men of sentimentality; they were not accustomed
to exposing their hearts upon their sleeve, but each, as the door
closed, recognised that something for one instant had come in among
them, had made their past conversation to appear meagre, crude, and
lacking in both height and depth. Somehow, they seemed to feel, although
no words expressed the thought, that for an instant they were in the
presence of a wisdom greater than any wisdom of a man's smoking-room.

"It is wonderful, wonderful," said the general slowly, and no man asked
him why he said it, or what was wonderful. But Richard, sitting apart,
watched Frank's face acutely, himself wondering when the hour would come
that the wife would forgive her husband, and this situation so fraught
with danger would be relieved.

CHAPTER XIV. ON THE EDGE OF A FUTURE

At last the day of the wedding came, a beautiful September day, which
may be more beautiful in uncertain England than anywhere else. Lali
had been strangely quiet all the day before, and she had also seemed
strangely delicate. Perhaps, or perhaps not, she felt the crisis was
approaching. It is probable that when the mind has been strained for
a long time, and the heart