im in his--well, in his perfection. It was impossible,
Sophy maintained, for anybody not to desire above all things to see him.

Up-stairs in the nursery, Winny and Mrs. Heron were worshipping Baby as
he lay on the nurse's lap, in his perfection, naked from his bath. Sophy
could not wait till he was given up to her. She seized him, in the
impatience of maternal passion. She bent over him, hiding her face with
his soft body.

Presently her eyes, Sophy's beautiful, loving eyes, looked up at Jane
over the child's shoulder, and their gaze had guile as well as love in
it. Jane stood before it motionless, impassive, impenetrable.

Winny fell on her knees in a rapture.

"Oh, Miss Holland!" she cried. "Don't you love him?"

Jane admitted that she rather liked him.

"She's a wretch," said Sophy. "Baby duckums, she says she rather likes
you."

Baby chuckled as if he appreciated the absurdity of Jane's moderation.

"Oh, don't you want," said Winny, "don't you want to kiss his little
feet? Wouldn't you love to have him for your very own?"

"No, Winny, I shouldn't know what to do with him."

"Wouldn't you?" said Mrs. Heron.

"Feel," said Winny, "how soft he is. He's got teeny, teeny hairs, like
down, golden down, just there, on his little back."

Jane stooped and stroked the golden down. And at the touch of the
child's body, a fine pain ran from her finger-tips to her heart, and she
drew back, as one who feels, for the first time, the touch of life,
terrible and tender.

"Oh, Jane," said Sophy, "what are you made of?"

"I wonder----" said Mrs. Heron.

Jane knew that the eyes of the two women were on her, searching her, and
that Sophy's eyes were not altogether kind. She continued in her
impassivity, smiling a provoking and inscrutable smile.

"She looks," said Sophy, "as if she knew a great deal. And she doesn't
know, Baby dear, she doesn't know anything at all."

"Wait," said Mrs. Heron, "till she's got babies of her own. Then she'll
know."

"I know now," said Jane calmly.

"Not you," said Sophy almost fiercely, as she carried the little thing
away to his bed beside her own. Winny and the nurse followed her. Jane
was alone with Frances Heron.

"No woman," said Frances, "knows anything till she's had a child."

"Oh, you married women!"

"Even a married woman. She doesn't know what her love for her husband is
until she's held his child at her breast. And she may be as stupid as
you please; but she knows mo