And day by day, not keeping pace with her other life, her life of work in the hospital went on. Week linked into week, month into month. The great open moors around her changed their hue, were often shrouded in mist. In December the first frosts glassed the pools. Many were the patients who had come and gone. The little cemetery under the hill was fuller. Other sufferers were more fortunate. Captain Lavering was fully convalescent, nearing his discharge. She saw him often at a distance, avoided him when he tried to approach her. She could not have explained why, even to herself. Somewhere deep down in her, the virility of his aspect set a chord vibrating. She was always extremely, almost painfully, conscious of his propinquity. For many weeks they had not exchanged a word. There came a night wonderful above all others. She thrilled with a strange new ecstasy, drawn from deep springs. It was the quiet, speechless ecstasy of some mysterious fulfilment. She was filled with a great tenderness that welled up and overflowed like a source. There was something warm against her heart. She looked down and saw that it was a newborn babe. She was in bed. Then, in a great surge of deeply flowing joy, she understood. She was a mother--the mother of Ronald's child! She could have cried for joy that lacked expression. Her fingers stroked thin silky hair on a tiny head. Suddenly she was aware that Ronald was looking down on her. She yearned up to him, but as she did so she was conscious that her allegiance was divided. Not all of her, as heretofore, reached out to him undividedly his. There was a dumb insistent claim at her breast. She smiled to disguise it. But it seemed that he understood. His face was troubled, the vivid eyes reproachful. He leaned over her. "Dearest," he said. "I cannot share you. The child must never be more than the symbol of our love. You must be mine--always mine. Promise me that you will always be mine alone!" His jealousy flattered her. A gush of affection for the strong lover admitting her power, mingled with the mother-craving for protection for self and child, was a fresh impulse revivifying the old allegiance: "Always yours, dearest--always yours!" He looked at her searchingly, his head seeming like a carven figure of destiny, strangely significant. "I could annihilate the thing that comes between us," he said, and she was a little frightened at his voice. It rolled away big, superhuman--she harked back, in a flitting thought, to an earlier dream-memory. He turned to a picture on the wall, pointed to it. It was the Alpine scene. "You and I," he said. "Always together--alone upon the heights." "Yes! Yes!" she said, only half understanding. "Always--always yours!" She woke with a start, her own voice ringing in her ears. Night was still a blackness in the little cubicle. She put out her hand, touched the matchboard wall to assure herself of her surroundings.