out much. You see, there's the
baby--"

He stared. "The baby--?"

"Her baby--Cecily's--"

"_Then you're a grandmother_?"

It seemed to Cissy that the whole restaurant rang with the emphasis of
the words. Yet he had not spoken loudly; not a head was turned in their
direction; even the waiter stood unmoved.

When she came to herself Landry was laughing softly. "When are you going
to let me see--the baby--?"

"Never--"

"Why not?"

Cissy went on to her doom. "Because you'll want to put me on the shelf
like all the rest of them. You'll want to see me with--my
hair--parted--and spectacles. And my eyes are perfectly good--and my
hair is my own--"

She stopped. Landry was surveying her with hard eyes.

"Don't you love--the baby--?"

Cissy shrugged. "Perhaps. I don't know yet. Some day I may when I
haven't anything to do but sit in a chimney-corner."

Thus spoke Cissy Beale, making of herself a heartless creature, flinging
back into the face of Valentine Landry his most cherished ideals.

But what did it matter? She had known from the moment of her confession
that he would be repelled. What man could stand up in the face of the
world and marry a grandmother!--the idea was preposterous.

She finished dinner with her head in the air; she was hypocritically
lively during the drive home; she said "Good-night" and "Good-bye"
without feeling, and went up-stairs with her heart like lead to find the
nurse weeping wildly on the first landing.

The baby, it appeared, was very ill. And the baby's father and mother,
having left the little cherub sleeping peacefully, were motoring
somewhere in the wide spaces of the world. The family doctor was out.
She had called up another doctor, and he would come as soon as he could.
But in the meantime the baby was dying--

"Nonsense, Kate," said Cissy Beale, and pulling off her gloves as she
ran, she made for the pale-gray room.

Now, as it happened, Valentine Landry, driving away in a priggish state
of mind, was suddenly overwhelmed by miserable remorse. Reviewing the
evening, he seemed to see, for the first time, the unhappiness in the
eyes of the little woman who had borne herself so bravely. In a sudden
moment of illumination he realized all that she must have been feeling.
Perhaps it had not been heartlessness; perhaps it had been--heart
hunger.

Leaning forward, he spoke to his chauffeur. They stopped at the first
drug-store, and Landry called up Cissy. Her voice from th