Now when lovers fall to talking hand in hand it is proper, even in a novel, to avert one's head and smile, saying that the conversation can have no possible interest to outsiders. Or, if a sentence or two be suggested, it is necessary to insist that love, divine love, can only find its first expression in mere foolishness. Belle and Philip therefore could evidently not have been lovers, for they talked serious and sound good sense while the year-old Jack with his wide, wistful eyes lay in his mother's arms and listened to it all. What was it to him if more than once a reluctant tear fell on his tiny wrinkled hands, and more than once Philip's voice trembled and then stopped a while? What were such emotions to a life which had come into the world barred from them forever? For Belle's child would never be as other children are; so much was certain; whether he would ever need her care more than another's was yet to be seen. But it was strange, was it not? she seemed to hear herself saying in a calm voice, the steadiness of which surprised her even at the time, that poor Dick's legacy had gone to a hospital for just such poor little God-stricken children. "Don't, Belle,--don't, for pity's sake,--I can't bear it." That had been the man's cry, bringing home to her the fact that she and Philip had changed places. In the old days a duty had lain between them; a duty lay between them now. Why had she seen evil and shame in this man's love then, and yet find none in it now? Then he had been calm, and she had fretted. Now with another man's child in her arms, and just the same love in her heart, she had the decision, and he the restless pain. In those days no thought of such love as deals in marriage had ever arisen between them; but now Philip had come all the way from India full of a man's determination to end the story in what the world said was the only possible, natural, or moral ending to any love-story. And on such stories as theirs the worldly verdict runs thus: they had loved each other when they could not marry, which was very wrong; but a kindly Providence having removed the unnecessary husband, they could marry, which set everything right. The mirk and fog settled very closely round them as they sate by the fire; closer on Philip than on Belle, for it was his turn to be scared by the phantom of foregone conclusions. What he had strenuously denied when the position ran counter to his pride, seemed true enough now that it joined issue with it. He loved Belle, so of course he must want to marry her. The two things were synonymous; when, of course, there was a possibility of getting married. Yet Belle, even with tears in her eyes, could smile as she told him that her first thought in life lay in her arms; that she could not even give him hope in the future, or bid him wait, since the waiting might be forever.