'Admiration!' She repeated the word in a low voice, rather scornfully, touching the keys of the piano lightly, and looking at me with a dreary smile. Then she turned her head away, but not quickly enough to hide from me that her eyes were filling with tears. A great thrill of pity and tenderness for the forlorn soul thus suddenly revealed drew me nearer to her, and I said, leaning towards the little bending figure-- 'I did not mean to pain you, Babiole. You cannot think that, caring for you as I used to do as if you had been my own child, I have lost all feeling for you now.' She turned quickly towards me again, biting her under lip as she fixed her eyes wistfully, eagerly, upon my face. Then with tears rolling down her cheeks, she laid her head on my arm, and clinging to my hand, to my sleeve, began to sob and to whisper incoherent words of gladness at my coming. 'My child, my child!' I said hoarsely, with a passionate yearning to comfort the fragile little creature whose whole body was trembling with repressed sobs. I got into a sort of frenzy as she went on helplessly crying, and eloquence soon ran dry in my efforts to comfort her. 'Look here, child, this won't do any good. Hold up your head, Babiole; for goodness sake don't go on like this, my dear, or I shall be snivelling myself in a moment,' I said, with more of the same matter-of-fact kind, until she presently looked up and laughed at me through her tears. 'There now, you've quite spoilt yourself by this nonsense,' I continued severely. 'Go and put yourself to rights before your husband comes in.' And I led her to the looking-glass with my arm round her, feeling, though I did not recognise the fact at the time, a great relief in this little demonstration of an affection which was growing every moment stronger. 'Do you know,' she asked presently, as she turned her head away from the glass before which she had, by some dexterous feminine sleight of hand with two or three hairpins, arranged her disordered hair, 'why Fabian had proofs to correct to-night?' I confessed with shame that my male mind had been content with the reason he had given. 'He wanted to leave me alone with you,' she explained, 'because he knows what a strong influence you have over me, and he hoped that you would give me a lecture.' 'A lecture! What did he want me to lecture on?' 'Oh, on my general conduct, I suppose; on my acquaintance, intimacy with people he dislikes; on my taking part in amateur theatricals; on a lot of things--on everything in fact.' 'But if your husband can't induce you to do what he wishes, what chance have I, an outsider?' 'Oh, Mr. Maude, dear Mr. Maude, have you been so long among the hills as to think like that? Or is it that life was a different thing when you took an active part in it? It's only in books that husbands are husbands, and wives are wives.'