erious. Do you think she's going to keep it up
for all eternity?"

"No, I don't, dear. I don't think she'll keep it up at all."

"I'm not so sure. I'm tired out with it. I give her up."

"No, you don't, dear, any more than I do."

"But what can I do? Is it, honestly, Edie, is it in any way my fault?"

"Well--I think, perhaps, if you'd approached her in another spirit at the
first--she told me that what shocked her more than anything that night at
Scarby, was, darling, your appalling flippancy. You know, if you'd taken
that tone when you first spoke to me about it, I think it would have
killed me. And she's your wife, not your sister. It's worse for her.
Think of the shock it must have been to her."

"Think of the shock it was to me. She sprang the whole thing on me at
four o'clock in the morning--before I was awake. What could I do?
Besides, she got over all that in the summer. And now she goes back to
it worse than ever, though I haven't done anything in between."

"It was all brought back to her in the autumn, remember."

"Granted that, it's inconceivable how she can keep it up. It isn't as if
she was a hard woman."

"No. She's softer than any woman I know, in some ways. But she happens to
be made so that that is the one thing she finds it hardest to forgive.
Besides, think of her health."

"I wonder if that really accounts for it."

"I think it may."

"I don't know. It began before, and I'm afraid it's come to stay."

"What has come to stay?"

"The dislike she's taken to me."

"I don't believe in her dislike. Give her time."

"Oh, the time I have given her! A year and more."

"What's a year? Wait," said Edith. "Wait."

He waited; and as the months went on, Anne schooled herself, for her
child's sake, into strength and calm. Her white, brooding face grew full
and tender; but its tenderness was not for him. He remained shut out from
the sanctuary where she sat nursing her dream.

He suffered indescribably; but he told himself that Anne had merely taken
one of those queer morbid aversions of which Gardner had told him. And at
the birth of their child he looked for it to pass.

The child was born in mid-October. Majendie had sat up all night; and
very early in the morning he was sent for to her room. He came, stealing
in on tiptoe, dumb, with his head bowed in terror and a certain awe.

He found Anne lying in the big bed under the crucifix. Her face was dull
and white, and her arms were stretched