ly added with an irritable gesture, breaking
off from his argument. "Don't you know better than that when a child's
asleep? Do you want it to wake up and cry?"

She flushed to the roots of her hair, for he had said something for
which she had no reply. She had undoubtedly disturbed the child. It
stirred in its sleep, then opened its eyes, and at once began to cry.

"There," said Jean Jacques, "what did I tell you? Any one that had ever
had children would know better than that."

Norah paid no attention to his mocking words, to the undoubted-truth
of his complaint. Stooping over, she gently lifted the child up. With
hungry tenderness she laid it against her breast and pressed its cheek
to her own, murmuring and crooning to it.

"Acushla! Acushla! Ah, the pretty bird--mother's sweet--mother's angel!"
she said softly.

She rocked backwards and forwards. Her eyes, though looking at Jean
Jacques as she crooned and coaxed and made lullaby, apparently did not
see him. She was as concentrated as though it were a matter of life and
death. She was like some ancient nurse of a sovereign-child, plainly
dressed, while the dainty white clothes of the babe in her arms--ah,
hadn't she raided the hoard she had begun when first married, in the
hope of a child of her own, to provide this orphan with clothes good
enough for a royal princess!

The flow of the long, white dress of the waif on the dark blue of
Norah's gown, which so matched the deep sapphire of her eyes, caught
Jean Jacques' glance, allured his mind. It was the symbol of youth and
innocence and home. Suddenly he had a vision of the day when his own Zoe
had been given to the cradle for the first time, and he had done exactly
what Norah had done--rocked too fast and too hard, and waked his little
one; and Carmen had taken her up in her long white draperies, and had
rocked to and fro, just like this, singing a lullaby. That lullaby
he had himself sung often afterwards; and now, with his grandchild in
Norah's arms there before him--with this other Zoe--the refrain of it
kept lilting in his brain. In the pause ensuing, when Norah stooped
to put the pacified child again in its nest, he also stooped over the
cradle and began to hum the words of the lullaby:

"Sing, little bird, of the whispering leaves,
Sing a song of the harvest sheaves;
Sing a song to my Fanchonette,
Sing a song to my Fanchonette!
Over her eyes, over her eyes, over her eyes of vio