"Well, well, well! That certainly is immense!" She was standing beside the table. Slowly her fingers plucked a carnation from the cluster before her. Violet eyes were upon it. "Is it?" she asked, slowly. "Isn't it?" he queried, surprised. She paused a moment; and then, swiftly: "Oh, I don't know. I--" Blake waited. But she did not go on. At length he spoke: "How long will he be gone?" "Maybe two months," she returned.... "It will be the first time that we've been apart for more than a day or two since we were married.... I-- I suppose that's silly, isn't it? "If that's silly, it's too bad anyone ever gets sensible," was his assuring reply. She had risen. Slowly she went around behind the little high chair. Leaning lithely over, she laid her cheek against that of her child, soft, rounded arms pressing her close. And then she looked at Blake, eyes to eyes. "I don't like it, Tom," she said, very slowly. "But," he protested, "it's a big honor--a great honor--an appointment like this, from the President." "Yes," she answered, thoughtfully. "It is a big honor. And I suppose that I should be very, very happy--Of course, in a way, I am." Then, suddenly: "But I'm not. I don't like it, Tom. I try to like it. I tell myself that I ought to like it. And yet I can't. Happiness is more than honors; and we are happy here--as happy as it is possible for two people" her eyes, laden of the mother love, fell upon the child that was hers, "for three people," she corrected, "to be. We have everything we need--everything we ought to want. I'd rather have just peace, and quiet and contentment, than all the honors there are." "And yet--" "I mustn't stand in the way of his advancement, you mean. I know that; and I haven't.... You know he left it all to me; and I said, 'Go.' It hurt, too, Tom.... I didn't want that he should go. I don't know why.... I--" she stopped. The child had finished her oatmeal. Lithely, the mother, stooping, lifted her from the chair, held her close for a tiny minute and then, kissing her, set her down upon the floor. "Run along, dearie," she directed. "Tell Mawkins to get you dressed." She watched the graceful, pretty child until she vanished through the door. Slowly she walked to the window. Hands clasped behind her she stood, gazing across the sunlit lawn--across the dancing, flashing waters of the Sound. A big, black schooner, a mountain of bellying whiteness superimposed upon a tiny streak of hull, was standing off for the Long Island shore. Her eyes followed it. Blake, lids half closed, as a man who seeks within the denseness of masculine brain for something that lieth not therein, considered for a long moment, eyes upon the perfect figure of perfect womanhood before him. At length he spoke.