"It depends," she replied quickly, answering the effort in his tone by a grateful look. "I may not have to build it. I may not be here. I am to go where I am most wanted; that was settled long ago, Phil." He was silent; what was there to say? Side by side they climbed the terrace steps to reach the front of the hospital which looked right across a stretch of wind-swept down to the open sea. A row of perambulators and wheeled couches stood under a glazed verandah, and above the level lines of square windows the words "SMITH'S HOME FOR INCURABLE CHILDREN" showed in big gold letters as a balustrade to the semi-Grecian façade. Belle glanced up at it before passing through the noiseless swinging doors. "I always wish I had been in time to stop that awful inscription," she said; "but it was scarcely worth while pulling it all down. You see none of them can read. We take them young, and those who stop don't live to be old; that is one thing to be thankful for. You don't like my speaking of it, Phil, but I often wonder what would have become of this empty shell of a house if my Jack had been born as most children are born,--as I wished him to be born. Some one would have carried on the work, I suppose, if I hadn't, and yet,--these bairns might have been God knows where, instead of in the sunlight." She opened an inner door, and signed to him to pass before her. There was sunlight there, and no lack of it, though it shone on sights which to Philip Marsden's unaccustomed eyes seemed to dim the brightness. Rows of little crutches along the walls, weary unchildlike faces resting on the low divans in the windows; in the centre a more cheerful picture of little ones gathered round a table set with bread and milk. "This is my show room and these are my show babies," said Belle with a smile. "We all get about more or less and play by ourselves; don't we, nurse? And some of us, like Georgie here, are going home again because we are too strong for the place. We don't keep noisy, romping, rioting ragamuffins, do we, children?" The face she turned up to hers as she passed grinned doubtfully, but all the other little white faces dimpled and wrinkled with mirth at the very idea of Georgie's exile. They went up stairs now, into more sunshine streaming on rows of beds where childhood wore away with no pleasure beyond a languid joy at a new picture-book or a bunch of flowers. Here they trod softly, for some of the little ones were already asleep. "Where is Freddy?" asked Belle in a whisper of the nurse busy smoothing an empty cot. "He seemed so restless this morning, ma'am, that Dr. Simmonds thought we had better put him in the White Ward; he was afraid--" Belle passed on, her face a shade graver, and as Philip followed her up another wide staircase she paused before a closed door and asked him to wait for her; she would not be long.