telling you
all this, dear Mrs. Majendie. I've never told another soul. But I
thought, perhaps, you ought to know."

"Why," Anne wondered, "does she think I ought to know?"

"You see," Mrs. Gardner went on, "_I_ thought I couldn't be any happier
than I was. But I am. Ten times happier. And I didn't think I _could_
love my husband more than I did. But I do. Ten times more, and quite
differently. Just because of this tiny, crying thing, without an idea in
his little soft head. I've learned things I never should have learned
without him. He takes up all my time, and keeps me from enjoying Philip;
and yet I know now that I never was really married till he came."

Mrs. Gardner looked up at Anne with shy, beautiful eyes that begged
forgiveness if she had said too much. And Anne realised that it was for
her that the little bride had been singing that hymn of hope, for her
that she had been laying out the sacred treasures of her mysteriously
wedded heart.

In the same spirit Mrs. Gardner now laid out her fine store of clothing
for the little son. And Anne's heart grew soft over the many little
vests, and the jackets, and the diminutive short-waisted gowns.

She was busy with a pile of such things one evening up in her bedroom
when Majendie came in. The bed was strewn with the absurd garments, and
Anne sat beside side it, sorting them, and smiling to herself that small,
pure, shy smile of hers. Her soft face drew him to her. He thought it was
his hour. He took up one of the little vests and spanned it with his
hand. "I'm so glad," he said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She shook her head.

"Nancy--"

"I can't talk about it."

"Not to me?"

"No," she said. "Not to you."

"I should have thought--"

Her face hardened. "I can't. Please understand that, Walter. I don't
think I ever can, now. You've made everything so that I can't bear it."

She took the little vest from him and laid it with the rest.

And as he left her his hope grew cold. Her motherhood was only another
sanctuary from which she shut him out. There was something so humiliating
in his pain that he would have hidden it even from Edith. But Edith was
too clever for him.

"Has she said anything to you about it?" he asked.

"Yes. Has she not to you?"

"Not yet. She won't let me speak about it. She's funnier than ever. She
treats me as if I were some obscene monster just crawled up out of the
primeval slime."

"Poor Wallie!"

"Well, but it's pretty s