own in her deep grey eyes swam the first
moisture of rising tears. "Don't you, my wonderful Spinny?"

"Sometimes I forget him, perhaps," he replied gravely, "but that is only
when I think of what may be coming if--the experiment succeeds--"

"Succeeds?" she exclaimed. "You mean if it fails!" Her voice dropped
instinctively, and they looked over their shoulders to make sure they
were alone.

He came up very close to her and spoke in her small pink ear. "If it
succeeds," he whispered, "we go to Heaven, I suppose; if it fails we
stay upon the earth." Then he stood off, holding her hands at arm's
length and gazing down upon her. "Do you want to go to Heaven?" he asked
very deliberately, "or to stay here upon the earth with me and Winky--?"

She was in his arms the same second, laughing and crying with the strange
conflict of new and inexplicable emotions.

"I want to be with you here, and forever. Heaven frightens me now.
But--oh, Spinny, dear protecting thing, I want--I also want--" She broke
off abruptly, and Spinrobin, unable to see her face buried against his
shoulder, could not guess whether she was laughing or weeping. He only
divined that something in her heart, profound as life itself, something
she had never been warned to conceal, was clamoring for comprehension and
satisfaction.

"Miriam, tell me exactly. I'm sure I shall understand--"

"I want Winky to be with us always--not only sometimes--on little
visits," he heard between the broken breathing.

"I'll tell him--"

"But there's no good telling _him_," she interrupted almost fiercely, "it
is _me_ you must tell...."

Spinrobin's heart sank within him. She was in pain and he could not quite
understand. He pressed her hard against him, keeping silence.

Presently she lifted her face from his coat, and he saw the tears of
mingled pain and happiness in her eyes--the eyes of this girl-woman who
knew not the common ugly standards of life because no woman had ever told
them to her.

"You see, Winky is not really mine unless I have some share in making him
too," she said very softly. "When I have made him too, then he will stay
forever with us, I think."

And Spinrobin, beginning to understand, knowing within him that singular
exultation of triumphant love which comes to a pure man when he meets the
mother-to-be of his firstborn, lowered his own face very reverently to
hers, and kissed her on the cheeks and eyes--saying nothing, and vaguely
wondering whe