in the shadows might have been any kind,
comforting hand. She found herself pouring it all out to Allan, there
close by her; the loneliness, the strain, the hard work, the lack of all
the woman-things in her life, the isolation and dreariness at night, the
over-fatigue, and the hurt of watching youth and womanhood sliding away,
unused, with nothing to show for all the years; only a cold hope that
her flock of little transient aliens might be a little better for the
guidance she could give them--

Years hence in rustic speech a phrase,
As in rude earth a Grecian vase.

And then, that wet, discouraged day in February, and the vision of Eva
Atkinson, radiantly fresh and happy, kept young and pretty by unlimited
money and time.

"Her children were so pretty," said Phyllis wistfully, "and mine, dear
little villains, were such dirty, untaught, rude little things--oh, it
sounds snobbish, but I'd have given everything I had to have a dainty,
clean little _lady_-child throw her arms around me and kiss me, instead
of my pet little handsome, sticky Polish Jewess. Up at home everything
had been so clean and old and still that you always could remember it
had been finished for three hundred years. And Father's clean, still old
library----"

Phyllis did not know how she was revealing to Allan the unconscious
motherhood in her; but Allan, femininely sensitive to unspoken things
from his long sojourn in the dark--Allan did. It was the mother-instinct
that she was spending on him, but mother-instinct of a kind he had never
known before; gayly self-effacing, efficient, shown only in its results.
And she could never have anything else to spend it on, he thought. Well,
he was due to die in a few years.... But he didn't want to. Living was
just beginning to be interesting again, somehow. There seemed no
satisfactory solution for the two of them.... Well, he'd be unselfish
and die, any way. Meanwhile, why not be happy? Here was Phyllis. His
hand clasped hers more closely.

"And when Mr. De Guenther made me that offer," she murmured, coloring in
the darkness, "I was tired and discouraged, and the years seemed so
endless! It didn't seem as though I'd be harming any one--but I wouldn't
have done it if you'd said a word against it--truly I wouldn't, dear."

The last little word slipped out unnoticed. She had been calling her
library children "dear" for a year now, and the word slipped out of
itself. But Allan liked it.

"My po