his grandparents would be
sure to bring him up in the way he should go, till she and Ray came home
together on his next furlough ... (after the War!--whenever that might
be!). But all her baby's pretty ways and unfolding intelligence would be
for others to enjoy! She, his devoted mother, would be thousands of
miles away!

The thought brought forth a flood of tears, and expressions of sympathy
from the nurse. "If it makes you feel so badly, I wouldn't go if I were
you."

"It breaks my heart!"

"There now, don't take on so. Give up the idea. You will feel easier in
mind to leave him when he is a bit older."

"It will be just as bad--perhaps worse!" cried Joyce, thinking of the
possibility of a loveless reunion with Ray, if she stayed away too long!
In that case she would have no compensation for her act of
self-sacrifice.

"Then take him with you, I have no objection to the voyage, or serving
in India which I have often wished to see."

"Oh, no. Baby is best here, for his own sake. In India I have all sorts
of anxieties. I would have to go alone."

"But there are many ladies who stay in Europe for the sake of their
children, leaving their husbands in India. In my last place, my
mistress, whose husband was a Forest officer living in lonely places
among the blacks, spent most of her time with her people in England as
she could not abide the natives, and the climate upset her nerves. Only,
occasionally, she visited him in the East, and sometimes he came home."

"What a life!" sighed Joyce. "I know it is done, but it isn't
right"--she was thinking of Honor's letter. "Both go different ways, and
what love and happiness is there for them?"

"But that is always so when ladies have husbands in India!"

"It need not be so. It makes me wonder why men marry when they know the
risk they run of broken domestic ties, and the burdens they have to
bear! It isn't worth while, if a man is to become only the means of
providing money for the comforts of his family, and keeping very little,
or none for himself--poor dear!"

Decidedly, Joyce Meredith's views had undergone a change.

The questions pressing on her mind were--Where was she most needed? and
where, most, lay her heart's desire?

In her case, duty and desire were no longer in conflict. Clearly, her
place was beside her husband as long as she was capable of enduring the
climate, and her heart was sick with longing for him.

"I shall be going out almost immediately-