ous, but
she's so healthy--not like those women who have always something the
matter with them!" And he, Elwyn, had gripped the other man's hand, and
muttered the congratulation which was being asked of him.

That meeting, so full of shameful irony, had occurred about a week
before the child's birth. Elwyn had meant to be away from London--but
Chance, so carelessly kind a friend to him in the past, at last proved
cruel, for surely it was Chance and Chance alone that led him, on the
very eve of the day he was starting for Norway, straight across the
quiet square, composed of high Georgian houses, where the Bellairs still
lived.

To-night, thanks to his mother, every incident of that long, agonizing
night came back. He could almost feel the tremor of half fear, half
excitement, which had possessed him when he had suddenly become aware
that his friends' house was still lit up and astir, and that fresh straw
lay heaped up in prodigal profusion in the road where, a little past the
door, was drawn up a doctor's one-horse brougham. Even then he might
have taken another way, but something had seemed to drive him on, past
the house,--and there Elwyn, staying his deadened footsteps, had heard
float down to him from widely opened windows above, certain sounds,
muffled moans, telling of a physical extremity which even now he winced
to remember.

He had waited on and on--longing to escape, and yet prisoned between
imaginary bounds within which he paced up and down, filled with an
obscure desire to share, in the measure that was possible to him, her
torment.

At last, in the orange, dust-laden dawn of a London summer morning, the
front door of the house had opened, and Elwyn had walked forward, every
nerve quivering with suspense and fatigue, feeling that he must know....

A great doctor, with whose face he was vaguely acquainted, had stepped
out accompanied by Bellair--Bellair with ruffled hair and red-rimmed
eyes, but looking if tired then content, even more, triumphant. Elwyn
had heard him say the words, "Thanks awfully. I shall never forget how
kind you have been, Sir Joseph. Yes, I'll go to bed at once. I know you
must have thought me rather stupid."

And then Bellair had suddenly seen Elwyn standing on the pavement; he
had accepted unquestioningly the halting explanation that he was on his
way home from a late party, and had happened, as it were, that way.
"It's a boy!" he had said exultantly, although Elwyn had asked hi