“And there she is, all our dreams of her coming true, asleep upstairs and very likely herself dreaming of the woman’s life that is opening before her. She’s very real to you, isn’t she, Harry?” He forced himself to speech with an effort. “Yes, dear. Go on.” “She’s worth all the anxieties we had with her--the anxieties we never imagined. Do you remember, when she was a little golden-haired prattler, that awful time when she was ill? Do you remember how I nursed her, night and day--and how you would come tip-toeing to her tiny cot and look down upon it, praying with all your soul that she would not die? I think that was when you first began really to love her very much, Harry--when you thought you might lose her.” She nodded her head in dreamy reminiscence, staring into the fire. “I remember how proud I was when you gave up your work for a day or two because you felt you could not leave the house while she was in danger. It was such a miracle for you to do that--like Joshua stopping the sun--and all because of our tiny little Jeanie. It made me love you, oh, ever so much more, Harry!” “Go on!” he said, closing his eyes again. “Go on!” “And then how proud of her you were while she was at school! She always had your brains, Harry, didn’t she? Always she was at the top of her class. I remember”--she smiled--“I used to fear that she might grow too clever and wear spectacles. But there was just that bit of me--of the frivolous me--in her, wasn’t there, Harry? And so just like her mother she grew up to like pretty frocks and look as charming in them as I used to want to look for you to admire me.” “Never so charming as you used to look, Christine, when you were twenty-one,” he said, his eyes lighting up with a genuine memory. “No one could look prettier than you did.” Her warm fingers curled in his hard hands and her smile came up to him. “Thank you, dear. It is nice of you not to forget.” He breathed a long sigh. “For every day of twenty-five years, Christine, I have seen you as you used to look then.” There was an emphasis in his subdued and deliberate enunciation that was eloquent of past agonies. “It was the real Christine, Harry, that twenty-one-year-old Christine who was so proud to be your wife and knew herself to be so unworthy of you.” “No, no!” he said, hoarsely. “Not unworthy--I didn’t understand then. If only I had understood--if I had not been so absorbed in the things I wanted to do----”