night began to settle down upon the village street.
Afterward, when the room was almost dark, so that they could not
see each other's faces, she said, "It will rain tonight;" and moved
restlessly on the pillows. "How terrible when the rain falls down on
you."

He wondered what she meant, and they sat on in the still darkening room.
She moved again.

"Will you presently take my cloak--and new grey cloak from behind the
door--and go out with it. You will find a little grave at the foot of
the tall gum-tree; the water drips off the long, pointed leaves; you
must cover it up with that."

She moved restlessly as though in pain.

Gregory assented, and there was silence again. It was the first time she
had ever spoken of her child.

"It was so small," she said; "it lived such a little while--only three
hours. They laid it close by me, but I never saw it; I could feel it by
me." She waited; "its feet were so cold; I took them in my hand to make
them warm, and my hand closed right over them they were so little."
There was an uneven trembling in the voice. "It crept close to me; it
wanted to drink, it wanted to be warm." She hardened herself--"I did not
love it; its father was not my prince; I did not care for it; but it was
so little." She moved her hand. "They might have kissed it, one of them,
before they put it in. It never did any one any harm in all its little
life. They might have kissed it, one of them."

Gregory felt that some one was sobbing in the room.

Late on in the evening, when the shutter was closed and the lamp
lighted, and the rain-drops beat on the roof, he took the cloak from
behind the door and went away with it. On his way back he called at
the village post-office and brought back a letter. In the hall he stood
reading the address. How could he fail to know whose hand had written
it? Had he not long ago studied those characters on the torn fragments
of paper in the old parlour? A burning pain was at Gregory's heart.
If now, now at the last, one should come, should step in between! He
carried the letter into the bedroom and gave it to her. "Bring me the
lamp nearer," she said. When she had read it she asked for her desk.

Then Gregory sat down in the lamp-light on the other side of the
curtain, and heard the pencil move on the paper. When he looked round
the curtain she was lying on the pillow musing. The open letter lay at
her side; she glanced at it with soft eyes. The man with the languid
eyelid