“It is strange,” he repeated, “strange, and very sad. The swift-running smooth course of life has been paralyzed for me, I am oppressed with torturing doubts, and—and—I believe it is not age, it is not the years which have stunned my powers, I believe it is this new phase of her life; then comes the consideration: is this a passing phase, or is it permanent? I cannot face the question!” he cried with a groan, holding his head in both hands to steady it. Then he took his hat and stick, and made mechanically for the Rectory. She always came from that direction, and always sadder than when she went forth. But to-day she was different. When she saw her husband she did not keep to her ordinary soft listless movements, and then when she reached him, slip her hand into his mechanically from mere reflex action, and strike out eagerly into an infant anecdote. She started and flushed, and ran towards him with outstretched hands, and looked wistfully up in his face, and her mouth trembled as, for the first time, the great change in the man flashed itself into her, and her heart stood still and her brain reeled. “Henry!” she cried, “My Henry, you are tired!” He stooped wonderingly closer to her. “Dearest, no!” She gazed with sickening dread up into his face. “Ah, yes, you are tired and sad. Mr. Fellowes has been telling me so much, making things clear, and—and—yes, you are older, and I never saw it until this instant.” “My love, I am well!” he said, caressing her softly. “It is I who have done this, Henry”—she silenced his protest with a soft imperious motion—“they saw it weeks ago; I am a bad wife now, as I have been a bad mother—ah, that is very sad!” She laid her head down on their clasped hands and with a little shudder broke into soft sobbing. “You are a most true, most noble wife,” he whispered, “my helpmeet in all things!” “I have gone away and neglected you, and you have grown older.” “Come home, my best beloved, come home and rest.” “If I only could,” she said wistfully, “but dear, I am restless, I cannot stay still. “After Gwen went away,” she continued softly, with bent head, as they paced slowly up the drive, “my heart seemed to fill with restless growth, new thoughts and feelings were for ever astir in me, I could not rest; old feelings that should have had their budding and birth long ago only then awoke, and beset me with sweet pain.” She stopped and leaned up against him. “I have never been able to tell you all this before, except indirectly. Ah, Henry, such strange new thoughts torture and soothe me, they war with one another continually and there is not one drop of sweetness that has not two drops of bitterness to temper it withal. “Let’s walk on, dearest, you are cold.—I have such strange yearnings, Henry, for baby touches and baby kisses, I, who have never felt them for my own, have to seek them among babies not of my flesh and blood. I have to find the pale ghosts of them amongst my lost children’s little clothes.”