She stared at the contents--a handbag of soft, tooled leather, with carved fastenings of dull gold. Guiltily she reached for the cover at her feet. She had stumbled upon Charles's hiding place. He shouldn't have been so extravagant. Her fingers brushed the soft brown surface in a swift caress as she pushed on the cover, and rose to tiptoe to replace the box. There, the other box was in the corner. "What are you after up there?" Charles spoke sharply from the door. Catherine, her cheeks flushing, dragged out the box of trimmings. "This!" she called gaily, "for our tree!" She mustn't let him guess that she had seen that bag. She slipped one hand under his arm, laughing to herself at his perturbed eyes. He was in Spencer's class, with that serious fear lest his secret be unearthed before the exact moment. "Come help trim it. You can arrange the lights." And as they worked, Catherine turned tentatively to that coiled spring of her desire, and found the resilience had vanished. She did not wish to go. She couldn't leave them. Going off to work each day was different. She needed that. But to go away, for days and nights---- "Moth-er!" Spencer's horrified accents came from the other side of the tree. "Letty's chewing the cranberry string!" "Here, you!" Catherine swung her up to her shoulder. How heavy she was growing! "You fasten Spencer's star to the top branch." X Catherine woke. What was that old crone crouched inquisitively at the foot of her bed? She lifted her head cautiously; nothing but her bathrobe over a chair, indistinct in the vague light. It must be very early. She caught the steady rhythm of Charles's breathing. She curled down again under the blankets, full of the relaxed ecstasy in which she had slept so dreamlessly. Dearest--she flowed out toward him in a great, windless tide. I've found him again, she thought. We're out of the thickets. Dimly she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs, the clinking of milk bottles. It is morning, then. She listened unconsciously for the shrill "Merry Christmas!" of the children. They would wake soon. As she lay, waiting, effortless, relaxed, a strange phantasy drifted over her, like morning fog in low places. She couldn't, drowsily, quite grasp it. Charles had not known about that plan, tugging, tempting her this last week. How could he have known when she rejected it, completely? And yet, as if he had felt that rejection, fed upon it, sacrificial offering to him, he had been grandly magnanimous, lavish, taking her submission. Perhaps--she stirred slowly out of the mists--perhaps it was only her own knowledge of the rejection, the sacrifice, binding her more closely to the roots of love, sloughing off that critical, offish self.