when he had first told her that he had cared for life because he could live it for her. She checked off the two years of their engagement, the first year of their married life, three years of happiness so absolute that they had both laughed at the idea that there could be real misery in this life. Then, though misery had come with the poor, deformed little son, with the baby of the twisted limbs and the vacant mind, it was for a time shared misery, until "until," she said to herself, rousing herself to sudden fierce erectness, " he proved that he had never loved me by believing that I, I, the mother of my precious baby, did not love it!" The suddenness of her movement made the sick man open his eyes. She bent forward, moistened his lips with a damp cloth as professionally as Miss Jones would have moistened them. He looked at her a steady quarter-minute, his sunken eyes beautiful, bright. "You are tired?" he whispered.

"Not at all." She wet his lips again and he closed his eyes. She leaned back, trembling, the tears slipping from beneath her, own closed lids. "I tired? Could I ever tire, if-"

Her thoughts went back to the three years of her child's life. She had tried so hard to take the great trouble as the wife of a physician should take it. To him, with his necessarily constant thought of the mechanism of the body, of the function of the brain, the sense of their child's condition must be more vividly painful and at the same time more a trouble to be endured with philosophy than other men could realize. Of his state of mind she felt sure, and she determined to minimize the pain for him by holding herself to an attitude of strict common sense. She must never cry out her agony that this should have come to her beloved child, to the darling who was the very soul of her soul. In this world there will always be cripples, will always be children who cannot think— there was no reason why she should be set off from other mothers. That was how it must seem to a doctor, and that was the way she must look at it. Just a girl she had been, not twenty-two, when she began the hard struggle to be, for her husband's sake, a sensible woman; and when she had worked at the task less than a year, how strangely he had begun to look at her, how strangely he would now and then take the child from her, as if— yes, at last it came to her as if that child's mother did not love it!

There was fierce

passion in the stock from which Kate Leland came; there had been a day when her contempt for the man who could not understand raged in dangerous fashion. Then had come the refuge of her race, icy calm. Once, long ago, she and the brother who had been the playmate of her childhood, the dearest thing in life to her then, had quarrelled; he had died many years later, unforgiving, unforgiven so far as words go, though passionately mourned. Now she encased herself against the husband who read her wrongly; even when the baby son died she had kept the

armor on.

66

66

"I did right, I am doing right," she said to herself now. Ah, Doctor? Ewall, here is Dr. Westcott."

When the doctor had gone she sat again with her husband while the nurse went to her breakfast. Through the open window came the joyous sounds of the back-yard celebrations on either side. The dimness of the shaded room seemed in some way to muffle the sounds, but suddenly a piercing cry of delight rang out, a shrill laugh. She started and bent half forward, as if to lift a little body to her; perhaps the excitement would be too much for her feeble little lad-she must take him into the house at once. Then her arms fell apart; she drew in her breath, looked down at her husband. He was looking up at her, wistfully, yet with an expression in which, to her fancy, curiosity predominated.

"You are tired," he said. "But Westcott thinks, I am sure, that the watching will end soon. You you feel as you did when the boy died?”

Her head swayed on her shoulders. Even when dying he had no tenderness, could believe she had not loved her child? Then fighting her terror took the haze from before her eyes, her terror lest she should say icily to this dying man, "No, I do not feel as I did when my heart broke for the boy." In the dizzy moment of silence she was saying to herself, tensely, "Let him be dastardly cruel; let me remember that we have been man and wife.”

His eyes, in his weakness, dropped from their steady gaze at her before she said, gently: "The doctors still have hope. You can save yourself, Ewall."

He forced his gaze towards her again. "For what?" he asked.

She shut her hands together. Did not cruelty deserve cruelty in return? He had

been a good doctor. She could say to him, "For your work." But there was something boyish about the wan face before her; she looked at it suddenly with famished eyes. That hollow of the cheek -why, it was her child's! "I never saw it before," she cried. "You look like Ewall, my Ewall!"

"Your Ewall?" He raised himself eagerly, then dropped back, exhausted. "Kate, did you-"

Her passion passed. "Yes," she said, dryly, "I did love my child. Strange, is it not?"

The shouts, the laughter from below, came to them in the stillness. She rose, went to the window, and peered down through the shutter. Her eyes fell upon the vine - covered flower stand. Suddenly the effect of having been up all night began to tell on her. Thoughts of her baby mingled in confused fashion with memories of her brother, memories of their childhood when they too had laughed and shouted over their nation's glory. But they were dead, were they not, baby Ewall and Dick? And the other Ewall, who looked like the baby, was he dead, too? She went quickly back to the bed and dropped on her knees by it.

Drawn by LESTER RALPH.

"Oh, how white you are!" she said. "Ewall, my Ewall, are you dead, too?"

"Kate," he said, "I've been all wrong"No, no," she cried. "I kept it all to myself. How could you think anything else? But you are not dead like Ewall and Dick. I said to myself that it was the anniversary, that you would die this afternoon, just as baby did. But you won't; you are going to live-for me." "Can you forgive "

Forgive! Oh, what right had I to try to be sensible? But now you must not talk, must not think of sad things-just listen to the firecrackers, Ewall!"

A smile flickered over the Doctor's white face. "Just the thing for serious illness," he murmured.

Mrs. Leland laughed as she slipped away to call the nurse. "He is enjoying the Fourth, Miss Jones," she said.

"Enjoying the Fourth!" The nurse looked at her, fearful. "Oh, you must go to sleep, Mrs. Leland."

"I am not crazy-but I will lie down now, for he is enjoying the Fourth, and so am I!"

CHAPTER XXII

FTER his interview with Eve, Loder retired to the study and spent the remaining hours of the day and the whole span of the evening in work. At one o'clock, still feeling fresh in mind and body, he dismissed Greening and passed into Chilcote's bedroom. The interview with Eve, though widely different from the one he had anticipated, had left him stimulated and alert. In the hours that followed it there had been an added anxiety to put his mind into harness, an added gratification in finding it answer to the rein.

A pleasant sense of retrospection settled upon him as he slowly undressed, and a pleasant sense of interest touched him as, crossing to the dressing-table, he caught sight of Chilcote's engagement-book-taken with other things from the suit he had changed at dinner-time and carefully laid aside by Renwick.

He picked it up and slowly turned the pages. It always held the suggestion of a lottery-this dipping into another man's engagements and drawing a prize or a blank. It was a sensation that even custom had not dulled.

At first he turned the pages slowly, then by degrees his fingers quickened. Beyond the Beyond the fact that this present evening was free he knew nothing of his promised movements. The abruptness of Chilcote's arrival at Clifford's Inn in the afternoon had left no time for superfluous questions. He skimmed the writing with a touch of interested haste, then all at once he paused and smiled.

Begun in HARPER'S BAZAR No. 1., Vol. XXXVIII.

"Big enough for a tombstone!" he said below his breath as his eyes rested on a large blue cross. Then he smiled again and held the book to the light.

"Dine 33 Cadogan Gardens, 8 o'c. Talk with L.," he read, still speaking softly to himself.

He stood for a moment pondering on the entry, then once more his glance reverted to the cross.

"Evidently meant it to be seen," he mused; "but why the deuce isn't he more explicit!" Then suddenly a look of comprehension crossed his face and the puzzled frown between his eyebrows cleared away.

With a feeling of satisfaction he remembered Lakeley's frequent and pressing suggestion that he should dine with him at Cadogan Gardens and discuss the political outlook.

Lakeley must have written during his absence, and Chilcote, having marked the engagement, felt no further responsibility. The invitation could scarcely have been verbal, as Chilcote, he knew, had lain very low in the five days of his return home.

So he argued, as he stood with the book still open in his hands, the blue cross staring imperatively from the white paper. And from the argument rose thoughts and suggestions that seethed in his mind long after the lights had been switched off, long after the fire had. died down and he had been left wrapped in darkness in the great canopied bed.

And so it came about that he took his second false step. Once during the press of the next morning's work it crossed his mind to verify his convictions by a glance at the directory. But for once the strong wish that evolves a thought conquered his caution. His