appears at times to have grown bitter, it must be only
that I have come to exact too much of him. I oughtn't to expect him to
take the same interest in the children that I do----"

Then, rising softly on her elbow, she smoothed the sheet over Jenny's
dimpled little body, and bent her ear downward to make sure that the
child was breathing naturally in her sleep. In spite of her depression
that rosy face framed in hair like spun yellow silk, aroused in her a
feeling of ecstasy. Whenever she looked at one of her children--at her
youngest child especially--her maternal passion seemed to turn to flame
in her blood. Even first love had not been so exquisitely satisfying, so
interwoven of all imaginable secret meanings of bliss. Jenny's thumb was
in her mouth, and removing it gently, Virginia bent lower and laid her
hot cheek on the soft shining curls. Some vital power, an emanation
from that single principle of Love which ruled her life, passed from the
breath of the sleeping child into her body. Peace descended upon her,
swift and merciful like sleep, and turning on her side, she lay with her
hand on Jenny's crib, as though in clinging to her child she clung to
all that was most worth while in the universe.

The next night Oliver telephoned from the Treadwells' that he would not
be home to supper, and when he came in at eleven o'clock, he appeared
annoyed to find her sitting up for him.

"You ought to have gone to bed, Virginia. You look positively haggard,"
he said.

"I wasn't sleepy. Mother came in for a few minutes, and we put the
children to bed. Jenny wanted to say good-night to you, and she cried
when I told her you had gone out. I believe she loves you better than
she does anybody in the world, Oliver."

He smiled with something of the casual brilliancy which had first
captivated her imagination. In spite of the melancholy which had clouded
his charm of late, he had lost neither his glow of physical well-being
nor the look of abounding intellectual energy which distinguished him
from all other men whom she knew. It was this intellectual energy, she
sometimes thought, which purified his character of that vein of
earthiness which she had looked upon as the natural, and therefore the
pardonable, attribute of masculine human nature.

"If she keeps her looks, she'll leave her mother behind some day," he
answered. "You need a new dress, Jinny. I hate that old waist and skirt.
Why don't you wear the swishy blue silk I