h dignity, but
with profound emotion. She knew her father too well not to
sympathize greatly with his natural view of so fatal an episode.

So she stopped on alone for her dark hour in Perugia. She stopped
on, untended by any save unknown Italians whose tongue she hardly
spoke, and uncheered by a friendly voice at the deepest moment of
trouble in a woman's history. Often for hours together she sat
alone in the cathedral, gazing up at a certain mild-featured
Madonna, enshrined above an altar. The unwedded widow seemed to
gain some comfort from the pitying face of the maiden mother.
Every day, while still she could, she walked out along the
shadeless suburban road to Alan's grave in the parched and crowded
cemetery. Women trudging along with crammed creels on their backs
turned round to stare at her. When she could no longer walk, she
sat at her window towards San Luca and gazed at it. There lay the
only friend she possessed in Perugia, perhaps in the universe.

The dreaded day arrived at last, and her strong constitution
enabled Herminia to live through it. Her baby was born, a
beautiful little girl, soft, delicate, wonderful, with Alan's blue
eyes, and its mother's complexion. Those rosy feet saved Herminia.
As she clasped them in her hands--tiny feet, tender feet--she felt
she had now something left to live for,--her baby, Alan's baby, the
baby with a future, the baby that was destined to regenerate
humanity.

So warm! So small! Alan's soul and her own, mysteriously blended.

Still, even so, she couldn't find it in her heart to give any
joyous name to dead Alan's child. Dolores she called it, at Alan's
grave. In sorrow had she borne it; its true name was Dolores.

XIII.

It was a changed London to which Herminia returned. She was
homeless, penniless, friendless. Above all she was declassee.
The world that had known her now knew her no more. Women who had
smothered her with their Judas kisses passed her by in their
victorias with a stony stare. Even men pretended to be looking the
other way, or crossed the street to avoid the necessity for
recognizing her. "So awkward to be mixed up with such a scandal!"
She hardly knew as yet herself how much her world was changed
indeed; for had she not come back to it, the mother of an
illegitimate daughter? But she began to suspect it the very first
day when she arrived at Charing Cross, clad in a plain black dress,
with her baby at her bosom. He