"I suppose," she went on, coming up closer to him, "that that's why no
one will ever be like her again--because no one will ever be taken in so
completely by shams again, never by the empty shell of anything. But
that's just how she influenced us--all of us. Myself, you, Lizzie,
Roddy, Francis ... we were all mixed up in it--

"And then the first moment that we really came into contact with her she
wasn't anything--wasn't simply there. Do you know, Dr. Chris, seeing her
now, just an old sick woman, conscious that everyone was escaping her, I
almost love her!... I do indeed!"

She sprang up and stood before him and laughed, crying--

"I'm grown up, Dr. Chris, I'm grown up! It's taken a time, but it's
happened at last! Meanwhile I shall be the most perfect wife, the most
perfect mother, and when the Tiger is restive there'll be the youngest
Seddon to put it all into. Oh! What a child that child will be! Roddy
and his impatience, me and my tempers----"

She laughed and for an instant her old fierce defiance was there then,
as though some spirit had flashed, before his eyes, through the window
into space and freedom it was gone. She herself proclaimed its
dismissal.

"It's gone--it's all gone--Dr. Chris. I'm the happiest woman in
England!"

But even as she spoke her eyes were wistful; half-seen, half-recalled,
eloquent with a colour, a flame that was too fierce for her present
world, hung before her the memory of a moment when, in a darkened room,
she had caught a letter to her lips, had sunk upon her knees before a
passion whose face she had scarcely seen but whose voice she had
heard and still now, in her new life, remembered. She had had her
moment ... the last strains of its dying music were still in her ears.
She caught her breath, then, turning, dismissed it; and, standing back
from Christopher, gave him her last word--

"But look after Francis. Be with him as much as you can.... He needs all
that you can spare--He's got to be--he's simply _got_ to be--the success
of the family!"

CHAPTER XIII

EPILOGUE--PROLOGUE

"Third Apparition--A Child Crowned ..."

_Macbeth_.

I

Late on the evening of May 17th Christopher heard of the relief of
Mafeking. It was too advanced an hour, he understood, for the town to
display its triumph that evening. Let Christopher wait.

The following night Brun, whom he had not seen for many months,
appeared. The clocks had struck nine and Christopher was