derful, and there lay his wife and child in
the room he knew so well--the curtains with a fruit pattern upon them,
the pale wallpaper with roses climbing up a trellis, and pretty blue
ribbons intervening between each line of roses. The room was painted
white, and he knew the odour of the room well, and the sensation of the
carpet. He could see the twilight, and the bulky nurse passing to and
fro; and his thoughts went back to his child, and he began to wonder if
it were like him or like its mother. It was probably like both. His
eyes went to the clock, and he thought of the meeting he was going to.
The notes of his speech were upon the table, but he found great
difficulty in rousing himself out of his chair; it was so pleasant to
lie there, thinking of his wife, of his home, and of his child. But
into this vague wandering sensation of happy and beautiful things there
came a sudden vision and a thought. He saw his wife take the baby and
put it to her breast, and he could not bear to think that that
beautiful breast, so dear to him, should suffer harm. He had often
thought of Ellen as a beautiful marble--she was as full of exquisite
lines as any marble--and only very rarely had he thought of her as a
mother; the thought had never been entertained long, for it was never
wholly sympathetic.

Now his thoughts quickened, and it seemed urgent that he must
communicate at once with his wife. She must not suckle the baby! Only
by telegram could he reach her soon enough, but it was not possible to
telegraph such a thing. He must write, but the letter would take six
days to reach her, and he stood thinking. The post was going out: if he
wrote at once she would get his letter in a week. He was due at the
meeting in about twenty minutes; the notes of his speech still lay on
the table, and he gathered them up and put them in his pocket, and
drawing a sheet of paper towards him, he began a hurried letter. But as
soon as he dipped his pen in the ink, he experienced great difficulty
in expressing his feelings; they were intense enough, but they were
vague, and he must find reasons. He must tell her that he loved her
beauty, and that it must suffer no disfigurement from a baby's lips. No
sooner did he put his feelings into words than they shocked him, and he
knew how much more they would shock Ellen, and he wondered how he could
think such things about his own child. The truth was, there was little
time for thinking, and he had to tell El