waif, the fruit
of a man's hot, malicious hour, she wrapped it in her arms, pressed its
delicate flesh to the silken folds of her bosom, and weeping, whispered
only: "My child, my little, little child!"

She had never, as many a wife far from her husband has done, talked to
her child of its father, told it of his beauty and his virtues, arrayed
it day by day in sweet linen and pretty adornments, as if he were just
then knocking at her door; she had never imagined what he would say
when he did come. What could such a father think of his child, born of a
woman whose very life he had intended as an insult? No, she had loved
it for father and mother also. She had tried to be good, a good mother,
living a life unutterably lonely, hard in all that it involved of study,
new duty, translation, and burial of primitive emotions. And with all
the care and tearful watchfulness that had been needed, she had grown so
proud, so exacting--exacting for her child, proud for herself.

How could she know now that this hasty declaration of affection was
anything more than the mere man in him? Years ago she had not been able
to judge between love and insult--what guarantee had she here? Did
he think that she could believe in him? She was not the woman he
had married, he was not the man she had married. He had deceived
her basely--she had been a common chattel. She had been miserable
enough--could she give herself over to his flying emotions again so
suddenly?

She paced the room, her face now in her hands, her hands now clasping
and wringing before her. Her wifely duty? She straightened to that.
Duty! She was first and before all a good, unpolluted woman. No, no, it
could not be. Love him? Again she shrank. Then came flooding on her that
afternoon when she had flung herself on Richard's breast, and all those
hundred days of happiness in Richard's company--Richard the considerate,
the strong, who had stood so by his honour in an hour of peril.

Now as she thought of it a hot wave shivered through all her body, and
tingled to her hair. Her face again dropped in her hands, and, as on
that other day, she knelt beside the cot, and, bursting into tears,
said through her sobs: "My baby, my own dear baby! Oh, that we could go
away--away--and never come back again!"

She did not know how intense her sobs were. They waked the child from
its delicate sleep; its blue eyes opened wide and wise all on the
instant, its round soft arm ran up to its mo