singing all over, Georgie,--all over, inside and out," she cried
joyously.

"Gee whiz!" he gasped. "Has the baby begun to talk?"

CHAPTER XXV

She did not meet him again at Lutie's. Purposely, and with a cunning
somewhat foreign to her sex, she took good care that he should not be
there when she made her daily visits. She made it an object to telephone
every day, ostensibly to inquire about Lutie's condition, and she never
failed to ask what the doctor had said. In that way she knew that he had
made his visit and had left the apartment. She would then drive up into
Harlem and sit happily with her sister-in-law and the baby, whom she
adored with a fervour that surprised not only herself but the mother,
whose ideas concerning Anne were undergoing a rapid and enduring
reformation.

She was shocked and not a little disillusioned one day, however, when
Lutie, now able to sit up and chatter to her heart's content, remarked,
with a puzzled frown on her pretty brow:

"Dr. Braden must be terribly rushed with work nowadays, Anne. For the last
week he has been coming here at the most unearthly hour in the morning,
and dashing away like a shot just as soon as he can. Good gracious, we're
hardly awake when he gets here. Never later than eight o'clock."

Anne's temple came down in a heap. He wasn't playing the game at all as
she had expected. He was avoiding _her_. She was dismayed for an instant,
and then laughed outright quite frankly at her own disenchantment.

Lutie looked at her with deep affection in her eyes. "You ought to have a
little baby of your own, Anne," she said.

"It's much nicer having yours," said Anne. "He's such a fat one."

Two weeks later they were all up in the country, and George was saying
twice a day at least that Anne was the surprise and comfort of his old
age. She was as gay as a lark. She sang,--but not grand opera selections.
Her days were devoted to the cheerful occupation of teaching young
Carnahan how to smile and how to count his toes.

But in the dark hours of the night she was not so serene. Then was her
time for reflection, for wonder, for speculation. Was life to be always
like this? Were her days to be merry and confident, and her nights as full
of loneliness and doubt? Was her craving never to be satisfied? Sometimes
when George and Lutie went off to bed and left her sitting alone on the
dark, screened-in veranda, looking down from the hills across the sombre
Hudson, she al