ns, I do care, very much. Anyhow, I wouldn't ask you to be a
mother to my children if I didn't think you nice. That's the test."

"Yes, Robert," she repeated, "that's the test."

They rose and went back to the hotel. From the lawn they could see the
open window of the children's room. They looked up.

"Would you like to see them, Kitty?"

"Yes."

He took her up to them. They were asleep. Little Barbara lay curled up
in the big bed, right in the middle of it where her dreams had tossed
her. Janet, in the cot beside her, lay very straight and still.

Robert signed to Kitty to come near, and they stood together and looked
first at the children and then into each other's faces. Kitty was very
quiet.

"Do you like them?" he whispered.

Her lips quivered, but she made no sign.

He stooped over each bed, smoothing the long hair from Janet's forehead,
folding back the blanket that weighed on Barbara's little body. When he
turned, Kitty had gone. She had slipped into her own room.

She waited till she heard Robert go away. The children were alone in
there. The nurse, she knew, was in Jane's room across the passage. Jane
was probably telling her that her master was to be married very soon.

She looked out. The door of Jane's room was shut; so was the door of the
children's room through which Robert had gone out. The other, the door
of communication, she had left ajar. She went softly back through it and
stood again by the children's beds. Janet was still sound asleep. Her
fine limbs were still stretched straight and quiet under the blanket.
Her hair was as Robert's hand had left it.

Kitty was afraid of disturbing Janet's sleep. She was afraid of Janet.

She stooped over little Barbara, and turned back the bedclothes from the
bed. She laid herself down, half her length, upon it by Barbara's side,
and folded her in arms that scarcely touched her at first, so light they
lay on her. Then some perverse and passionate impulse seized her to wake
the child. She did it gently, tenderly, holding back her passion,
troubling the depths of sleep with fine, feather-like touches, with
kisses soft as sleep.

The child stirred under the caressing arms. She lay in her divine
beauty, half asleep, half awake, opening her eyes, and shutting them on
the secret of her dream. Then Kitty's troubling hand turned her from her
flight down the ways of sleep. She lay on her back, her eyes glimmered
in the lifting of their lids; they opened un