Again came the ghost of a smile, and the same plaintive cry. Philip walked to the window and looked out on the roses. It was a very slight thing, that cry, to have come between a man and a woman,--if it had come between them. He turned to look at Belle instinctively, and found her looking at him. No! nothing had come between them. Before the insoluble problem of what Belle held in her arms love seemed to him forever divorced from marriage. The veriest pariah, born of God knows what, or of whom, the outcome of the basest passion, might enter the world fair and strong and capable, while their child, if they married, bringing each to each a pure devotion, might be as these children here. He crossed the room again and sate down on the bed beside her. "How many have you in the hospital now?" he asked in a low voice, for Jack, contented and comfortable, was evidently falling asleep. "Fifty; but Dr. Simmonds says he could fill a hundred beds to-morrow. It is the best place, he declares, of its kind." "Would you undertake so much?" She shook her head. "I never know,--no one knows from day to day. They are all so frail. Freddy, for instance, was no worse yesterday, and to-day! There are plenty to fill my place here when,--when the time comes." "It may never come. Besides," he added, "I may be incurable myself ere long. Don't you remember promising me the gatekeeper's place if ever I was pensioned off minus a leg or an arm?" "Did I?" she answered in the same light tone, as she rose to lay little Jack on his pillow and draw the blanket over him. "Then I must warn the present old cripple that his place isn't a permanent one. Isn't he like his father, Phil?" she added, laying her hand on the child's pretty soft curls. "Very." They passed along the sunny corridors again and so out into the open air. Philip drew his hand over his forehead as if to brush away puzzling thoughts, and gave a sigh of relief. "Come down to the cliffs with me, Belle," he said. "There is plenty of time before lunch, and I feel as if I wanted a blow. It's rather an irrelevant remark, but I wonder what will become of the babies if women become men?" They crossed the downs keeping step together, and walking rapidly as if to leave something behind, finally seating themselves in a niche between two great white pillars of chalk, whence they could see the waves ebbing and flowing among the rocks at their feet. The horizon and the sky were blent into one pale blue, so that the fishing boats with their red-brown sails seemed hovering between earth and heaven. "How long is it this time?" she asked after a pause. "The usual three months?" "Yes! the usual three months from the frontier. That leaves me six weeks with you; six whole weeks." There was another pause. "Philip!" she said suddenly, "I'll marry you to-morrow if you like,--if,--if it would make you happier."