have no name than
his! I am sure it is a wicked name. So I want you to know that it is
not yours. You have no name by law, but I think, now, that there are
worse things. Your father's name was Harry Strangeways. His people are
English, a good family but very strict. I could not let them know about
us. They would never have forgiven Harry. It would have been like
slandering the dead. Do not blame him, little Desire, for I am sure he
meant to do right. He was always light-hearted. And kind--always kind.
Your laugh is just like his. Think of us both, if you can, with
kindness--your unhappy Mother."

Long before Desire came to the end of the crumpled sheets her tears
were falling hot and thick upon them. Tears which she had not been able
to shed for her own broken hope came easily now for this long vanished
sorrow. Her mother! How pitifully bare lay the shortened story of that
smothered life. Desire's heart, so much stronger than the heart of her
who gave it birth, filled with a great tenderness. She saw herself once
more a little frightened child. She felt again that sense of Presence
in the room. And knew that, for a child's sake, a gentle soul had not
made haste to happiness.

For that gay scamp, her father, Desire had no tear. And no
condemnation. Her mother had loved him. Her gentleness had seen no
flaw. Lightly he had taken a woman to protect through life--to neglect,
as lightly, the little matter of living. Desire let his picture slip
unhindered from her mind.

There was relief, though, in the knowledge that she owed no duty
there--or here. The instinct which had always balked at kinship with
the strange old man who had held her youth in bondage had not been the
abnormal thing she once had feared it was. She had fought through--but
it was good to know that she had fought with Nature, not against her.
At least she could start upon her new life clean and free....

A pity, though, that life should lie like ashes on her lips!

CHAPTER XXXIX

Nevertheless, and despite the taste of ashes, one must live and take
one's morning bath. Desire thought, not without pleasure, of the pool
beneath the tree. Wrapped in her blue kimona, her leaf-brown hair
braided tightly into a thick pigtail and both hands occupied with
towels and soap, she pushed back the tent flap and stepped out into the
green and gold of morning.

The first thing she saw was Benis sitting on a fallen log and waiting.
He had been waiting a long time