when the silence
between them had lengthened uncomfortably. "You'd be just the wife for
him, Charlotte!"

Charlotte turned toward her, and there was no mistaking her earnestness
and her sincerity. "I'd marry him to-morrow!" she cried.

"Oh, Charlotte, I never _dreamed--my dear_!----"

"Don't be sorry for me," Charlotte interrupted warningly. "Don't be
sorry for me. I may marry him yet!"

And a moment later, she was swinging down the street, as serene and
independent as if she had never known--much less, confessed--the pain
of unrequited love.

As Sheila looked after her, she noticed again the gold of her hair, the
beautiful, free carriage of her shoulders--and now she felt no pleasure
in them. Rather was she conscious of a sharp little pang of envy, and
with it, sounded the echo of Charlotte's last words--"I may marry him
yet!" Charlotte was a splendid, gallant creature; she _might_ marry
Peter. And then Sheila, feeling that envious pang again and still more
sharply, demanded of herself in swift terror: "Am I jealous?--_am I
jealous of Charlotte because Peter may come to love her_?"

Oh, it couldn't be that!--it couldn't! It was impossible that she
should be jealous about any man but her husband. For she and Ted loved
each other--they _did_ love each other, whatever had been their
mistakes with each other.

She called Eric to her, and he left his playmate on the lawn and came,
smiling. She caught him to her, with a sort of frightened passion:

"Kiss mother, darling!"

He looked back over his shoulder at the boy who was waiting for him.
"With him there?" he inquired reluctantly, already shy of caresses
before his own sex.

But Sheila, usually the most considerate and tactful of mothers, amazed
him now by ignoring his hint. Still with that terrified passion, she
kissed him not once, but many times--her son and Ted's! Her son and
Ted's! Then, leaving him standing there in his astonished
embarrassment, she went into the house and up to her own room, there to
sit and stare before her at things unseen, but all too visible to her.

So Ted had been right after all; right in objecting to her being so
much with Peter. It _had_ been unwise; moreover, it had been wrong,
all that companionship of the past winter. For it had brought her to
this; it had brought her so to depend upon Peter that she could not be
happy unless he was often with her; it had brought her so to care for
him that she could not thi