She came on, still murmuring to her baby, she came up to the French window, and put out her hand to open it—then the madness fell from Brydon, and the whole truth came with a rush. He sprang to his feet, cast one perturbed look at Strange, “Kill him or not, I can’t face it,” he muttered, and fled. When Gwen got into the room, she sank wearily into a chair, and throwing off her hat let the baby butt her at his will. When the smile for her baby flickered off her face, the final contained anguish of it was awful, but the child gave her little time to nurse grief. Every moment she had either to rock him, croon little songs to him or tickle him, if she were silent or passive for a moment a lusty butt against her breast or a punch from the pink dimpled fist brought her back to his service. As she sat—sideways to the window—it was impossible for her to see Strange, but there was nothing to hide her from him. The soft murmur of croons and baby-sounds at last half awoke him, he lay for some moments and let the vague music creep into his semi-consciousness, then he opened his eyes impatiently and closed them again—it was only one more dream, he thought—he was beset with dreams, tortured, shaken by them. “Oh, God! those drugs,” he muttered. Again the murmurs broke on his ears, there was a chuckle, a tender protesting voice, and a sharp little squeal. He shivered and peered out towards the sounds, his eyes were dimmed from his great sickness and could only see “men as trees walking.” Gradually he made out the shapes of a woman and a little child. “Is it a dream, or death?” he murmured. “Oh! God, spare me! I am haunted by delusions.” Another little murmur, and a soft low sob, it was the woman this time. Again he opened his eyes and through his dreaming saw the little yellow-headed child laughing around the chair, and inviting the woman to a game of bo-peep. “Oh! my baby, my own, own baby,” she broke out, stooping to him, “do you know what they say—what they din into my ears, little love, dear baby mine? They say your father is dead, _dead_, DEAD, dear one. And must you live, grow up, little manikin, without knowing what a man he was?—Sweet, must I sing?—Ah! If you only knew how it hurts!” The smile flickered back to her face, as she took him on her knee, and she sang a little song he evidently knew well, for he kicked and crowed by way of chorus, then he played with his bare toes for a little—his mother, as she sang, had pulled off his socks to kiss his feet—and as he played she returned to her sad soliloquy. “You will have to take all from me on trust, little one, and, of course, you will think I exaggerate, my own, when I tell you that your mother had the best man that God yet made or will make, to love her, to love her.—Ah! what love it was!” she repeated gently. Then her eyes dreamt, and rested for a moment, all the pain fled, and her face shone with radiant triumph and her mouth trembled like a happy child’s.