After a play like this they talked a good deal in the cab on the way home, of anything except the play, as though sending it to Coventry; but every now and then a queer silence would fall between them. He would break it by clucking his tongue against his palate, remarking: “Confound that beastly play!” And she, with her arms folded on her breast, would give herself a little hug of comfort. They felt how unfairly this play had taken them to see it. On evenings such as this, before going to their room, they would steal into the nursery--she in advance, he following, as if it were queer of him--and, standing side by side, watch their little daughters sleeping. The pallid radiance of the nightlight fell on the little beds, and on those small forms so confidently quiet; it fell too, on their own watching faces, and showed the faintly smiling look about her lips, over the feathered collar of her cloak; showed his face, above the whiteness of his shirt-front, ruddy, almost shining, craning forward with a little puzzled grin, which seemed to say: “They’re rather sweet; how the devil did I come to have them?” So, often, must two pigeons have stood, looking at their round, soft, grey-white young! They would touch each other’s arms, and point out a tiny hand crumpled together on the pillow, or a little mouth pouting at sleep, and steal away on tiptoe. In their own room, standing a minute at the window, they inhaled the fresh night air, with a reviving sense of comfort. Out there, the moonlight silvered the ragged branches of the elm tree, the dark block of mansions opposite--what else it silvered in the town, they fortunately could not see! A CHILD XVII A CHILD In Kensington Gardens, that February day, it was very still. Trees, stripped of every leaf, raised their bare clean twigs towards a sky so grey and so unstirring that there might never have been wind or sun. And on those branches pigeons sat, silent, as though they understood that there was no new life as yet; they seemed waiting, loth to spread their wings lest they should miss the coming of the Spring. Down in the grass the tiniest green flames were burning, a sign of the fire of flowers that would leap up if the sun would feed them. And on a seat there sat a child.