d violets. The sun lay warm on them; their breath stirred
in the cup, like the rich, sweet fragrance of the wine of day.

Majendie grasped Anne's arm and led her forward.

In the middle of the green circle, under the streaming sun, cradled in
warm grass, a girl baby sat laughing and fondling her naked feet. She
laughed as she lay on her back and opened one folded, wrinkled foot to
the sun; she laughed as she threw herself forward and beat her knees with
the outspread palms of her hands; she laughed as she rocked her soft body
to and fro from her rosy hips; then she stopped laughing suddenly, and
began crooning to herself a delicious, unintelligible song.

"Look," said Majendie, "that's what I wanted to show you."

"Oh--oh--oh--" said Anne, and looked, and stood stock-still.

The beatitude of that adorable little figure possessed the scene. Green
earth and blue sky were so much shelter and illumination to its pure and
solitary joy.

"Did you ever see anything so heart-rending?" said Majendie. "That
anything could be so young!"

Anne shook her head, dumb with the fascination.

As they approached again, the little creature rolled on its waist, and
crawled over the grass to her feet.

"The little lamb--" said she, and stooped, and lifted it.

It turned to her, cuddling. Through the thin muslin of her bodice she
could feel the pressure of its tender palms.

Majendie stood close to her and tried gently to detach and possess
himself of the delicate clinging fingers. But his eyes were upon
Anne's eyes. They drew her; she looked up, her eyes flashed to the
meeting-point; his widened in one long penetrating gaze.

A sudden pricking pain went through her, there where the pink and flaxen
thing lay sun-warm and life-warm to her breast.

At first she did not heed it. She stood hushed, attentive to the
prescience that woke in her; surrendered to the secret, with desire that
veiled itself to meet its unveiled destiny.

Then the veil fell.

The eyes that looked at her grew tender, and before their tenderness the
veil, the veil of her desire that had hidden him from her, fell.

Her face burned, and she hid it against the child's face as it burrowed
into the softness of her breast. When she would have parted the child
from her, it clung.

She laughed. "Release me." And he undid the clinging arms, and took the
child from her, and laid it again in the cradling grass.

"It's conceived a violent passion for you," said he.