l!" She laid her hand on
his.

That aroused him. He smiled at her and said then: "Kate, we must
tell people the truth. Why shouldn't we say where he comes from? Yes,
yes, it's much better, otherwise I fear we shall have a good deal of
unpleasantness. And if the boy does find out in good time that he is
not really our child--I mean our own child--what does it matter?"

"Good gracious!" She threw up her hands as though horrified.
"No--not for the world--no! Never, never!" She sank down on the bed,
spread both her arms over the child's body as though protecting it, and
nestled her head on the warm little breast. "Then he would be lost to
us, Paul."

She took a deep breath and trembled. Her voice expressed such
horror, such a terrible fear and prophetic gravity that it startled the
man.

"I only thought--I mean--I have really long felt it to be my duty,"
he said hesitatingly, as though making a stand against her fear. "I
don't like that the--that people--well, that they talk. Don't be so
funny about it, Kate; why shouldn't we tell?"

"Not tell! You ask why we shouldn't tell? Paul, you know that
yourself. If he gets to know it--oh, that mother! that Venn!"

She clasped the boy even more tightly; but she had raised her head
from his breast. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked quite
bewildered as they stared at her husband. "Have you forgotten her?"

Her tremulous voice grew hard. "No, he must never know it. And I
swear it and you must promise me it as well, promise it
sacredly now, here at his bedside whilst he's sleeping peacefully--and
if I should die, not then either, Paul"--her voice grew louder
and louder in her excitement, and its hard tone became almost a
scream--"we'll never tell him it. And I won't give him up. He's my
child _alone_, our child alone."

Then her voice changed. "Woelfchen, my Woelfchen, surely you'll never
leave your mother?"

Her tears began to stream now, and whilst she wept she kissed the
child so passionately, so fervently that he awoke. But he did not cry
as he generally did when he was disturbed in his sleep.

He smiled and, throwing both his little arms round her neck as she
bent down to him, he said, still heavy with sleep, but yet clearly,
plainly, "Mammy."

She gave a cry of rapture, of triumphant joy. "Do you hear it? He
says 'Mammy.'"

She laughed and cried at the same time in her excessive joy, and
caught hold of her husband's hand and held it fast. "Paul--daddy--come,