They were well covered up from the weather in large blue coats with capes, and blue felt hats with butterfly bows to match at the ends of their flaxen braids. They looked like their mother ... I couldn't see them growing up to anything that would fit with Sarah and Jerry and Polatkin. The wing of the wind shook out some gathered drops of moisture as they passed, the branches of the trees clashed softly together, and as they turned into the grounds I noticed that the older one had something in her walk that reminded me of her father. I was pierced through with a formless jealousy of the woman who had borne them in her body. I was moved, but not with the impulse to draw them to my bosom. I felt back in the place where my boy had been, for the connecting link of motherliness and failed to find it. I had had it once, that knowledge of what is good to be done for small children and the wish to do it, but it was gone from me. It was as though I might have had a hand or a claw, any prehensile organ by which such things are apprehended, and when I reached it out after Helmeth's children it was withered. What I found in myself was the familiar attitude of the stage. I could have acted what swept through me then, I could have brought you to tears by it, but there was nothing I could do about it _but_ act. I wrote Helmeth that night that I had seen the children and then I burned the letter. He came at last. He was greatly concerned about his enterprise which was not yet established on that footing which he would like to have for it, and I think it was a relief to him to have me without the conventions and readjustments of marriage. It was tacitly understood between us that things were better as they were until that business was settled. I think he could not have had a great deal of money at the time; all that racing to and fro between London and Mexico must have cost something. His anxiety about the girls, which occasioned his sending them to the most expensive schools, and his affection for them, which led to their being carted about by their aunt to meet him occasionally at far-called places, was an additional drain. We were very happy; there is nothing whatever to tell about it. We met in brief intervals snatched from our work and did as other lovers do. Sometimes he would come for me at the theatre--the freshness of my acting never palled on him. Other times I would find him waiting for me in the little flat I had expressly chosen and furnished to be loved in. The pricking warmth of his presence would meet me as I came up the stair. Not long ago I found myself unexpectedly in a part of the city where we used to walk because we were certain not to meet any of our friends there. There was a tiny café where we used often to dine, and the memory of it swept over me terrifyingly fresh and strong.