In about a week Kate was sufficiently restored to sit up in bed. Her very weakness and lassitude were a source of happiness; for, after long months of turmoil and racket, it was pleasant to lie in the covertures, and suffer her thoughts to rise out of unconsciousness or sink back into it without an effort. And these twilight trances flowed imperceptibly into another period, when with coming strength a feverish love awoke in her for the little baby girl who lay sleeping by her side. And for hours in the reposing obscurity of the drawn curtains mother and child would remain hushed in one long warm embrace. To see, to feel, this little life moving against her side was enough. She didn't look into the future, nor did she think of what fate the years held in store for her daughter, but content, lost in emotive contemplation, she watched the blind movements of hands and the vague staring of blue eyes. This puling pulp that was more intimately and intensely herself than herself developed strange yearnings in her, and she often trembled with pride in being the instrument through which so much mystery was worked; to talk to herself of the dark dawn of creation, and of the day sweet with maternal love that lay beyond, was a great source of joy; to hear the large, hobbling woman tell of the different babies she had successfully started that year on their worldly pilgrimage never seemed to weary her. She interested herself in each special case, and when the nurse told her she must talk no more she lay back to dream of the great boy with the black eyes who had so nearly been the death of his little flaxen haired mother. She felt great interest in this infant, who, if he went on growing at the present rate, it was prophesied would be in twenty years' time the biggest man in Manchester. But the nurse admitted that all the children were not so strong and healthy. Indeed, it was only last week that a little baby she had brought into the world perfectly safely had died within a few days of its birth, for no cause that anyone could discover; it had wilted and passed away like a flower. The tears rolled down Kate's cheeks as she listened, and she pressed her own against her breast and insisted on suckling her infant although expressly forbidden to do so by the doctor. These days were the best of her life. She felt more at peace with the world, she placed more confidence in her husband than she had ever done before; and when he came in of an afternoon and sat by her side and talked of herself and of their little baby, softened in all the intimate fibres of her sex, she laid her hand in his, and sighed for sheer joy. The purpose of her life seemed now to show a definite sign of accomplishment.