, less hard to bear than her
own. He could find outlet for his sorrow. She, perforce, was dumb.

Since that day, Thayer had caught no glimpse of Beatrix. She had seen
him repeatedly, however, when she had been driving; and once, at Bobby's
urgent pleading, hidden from view in the back of a box, she had heard
him sing _Valentine_. On the way home, she had decided that, after all,
perhaps his fate was no easier than hers to bear. His sorrow had
measured itself by the greatness of his personality.

As the May days passed by, rumors reached the ears of Thayer that all
was not well with Beatrix. In her strict retirement, he could get no
word from her; but at length, as the rumors increased, he sought out
Bobby Dane. When he came away from Bobby, his face was stern and seamed
with deep lines around his rigid lips, and he vouchsafed to Arlt no
reason for his sudden postponement of the date for their sailing.

"The first of July will bring us there in season," he explained briefly.
"I find I can't leave New York until after the twentieth."

So, in the first fierce heat of early June, the days dragged slowly
along. Day after day, Thayer sat long at his desk in the attitude of
passive waiting. Now and then he read over his unsigned contracts,
wondering, meanwhile, whether he would ever sign them. If Beatrix lived,
he had determined to spend the next year abroad. In the other event--He
shook his head.

Nothing then could make much difference in his future.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

During the second week in June, Beatrix's baby was born, and for days
afterward, the mother's life, so long in danger, now hung by a thread.
Then the good old fibre of the Danes reasserted itself, and Beatrix came
slowly upward from the verge of the River of Death. Bobby's face cleared
itself of its shadows, Thayer signed his contracts and, the next week,
he and Arlt finally sailed for Europe.

In the long days of her convalescence, Beatrix manifested an utter
indifference to the tidings from the outer world. She lay by the hour,
her baby on her arm, looking down at the fuzzy little head and the red
little face whose indeterminate features were fast taking the stamp of
those of their father. Strange to say, the fact caused Beatrix no
repulsion. The fires of her being seemed to have burned themselves out,
and even her feeling to Lorimer shared in her general apathy. In the
weeks which had followed his death, she had made up her mind that the