e, and soft
as mercy, and the very colour of innocence itself. It had seemed to
Marion that often those who walked in those beams tried to justify the
moon's faith in them. Harry had been the sweeter lover when the nights
were not dark; when there was this noble glory in the sky his passion
had changed from greed for something as easily attainable as food, to
hunger for something hardly to be attained by man. Perhaps his son, if
he would walk in the moonlight, would remember that which he had
forgotten. She said eagerly: "Richard, before you go to bed, let us go
out into the garden, and look at the moon setting over Kerith Island."

"No," he said obstinately, and laid his head on her lap. She began to
rock herself with misery, until he made a faint noise of irritation.
There followed a long space when the clock ticked, and told her that
there was no hope, things never went well on this earth. Then he
exclaimed suddenly, "Marion."

"Yes?"

She had hoped that there had come into his mind some special aspect of
Ellen's magic which he loved and desired to share with her. But he
muttered, "That box on the dresser. Up there on the top shelf."

She followed his eyes in amazement. "The scarlet one in the corner? That
belongs to cook. I think it's her workbox. What about it?"

He stared at it with a drowsy smile. "You had a cloak that colour when I
was a child," he murmured, and again buried his head in her lap.

"Why, so I had," she said softly, and thought proudly to herself, "How
he loves me! He speaks of trifling things about me as if they were good
ale that he could drink. He speaks like a sweetheart...." And then
caught her breath. "But that," she wept on, "is how he ought to speak of
Ellen, not of me." A certain gaunt conviction stood up and stared into
her face She wriggled in her seat and looked down on her strong,
competent hands, and said to herself uneasily: "I wish life could be
settled by doing things and not by thinking...." But the conviction had,
by its truthfulness, rammed in the gates of her mind. She cried out to
herself in anguish: "Of course! Of course! He cannot love Ellen because
he loves me too much! He has nothing left to love her with!" A tide of
exultation surged through her, but she knew that this was the movement
within her of the pride that leads to death. For if Richard went on
loving her over-much, the present would become hideous as she had never
thought that the circumstances of her splen