Ruth on her side had said nothing; but she had felt profoundly the wound he had inflicted on her heart. So much her silence and unusual reserve had told him. Had he gone too far? Had her resentment been deeper than he had divined? Had he by his stupid brutality in a moment of animal panic and animal pain snapped the light chain that bound him to this woman he loved so dearly and knew so little? And none was more conscious than he how fragile was that chain. Ruth had never been immersed in love for him: she had never pretended to be. He knew that. She had been an affectionate and most loyal friend; and that was all. On the threshold of his home he paused and stared down with the frightened snort of a horse suddenly aware of an abyss gaping at his feet. For the first time in his married life the instant sense of his insecurity, always present in his subconsciousness, leapt into the light of day. He gathered himself and marched upstairs as a man marches up the steps of the scaffold to pay the merited punishment for his crimes. Then he heard a little noise. The door of the back room where the children, all but the baby, slept, was open. He peeped in. Susie was there, and Jenny with her. Hope returned to him. They were sitting up in bed still in outdoor clothes. Then he noticed that the baby's cot which stood of wont in the front room beside the big bed was here too. His sudden relief changed to anguish. He saw it all: _his_ children, the three of them, packed away together like fledgelings in a nest--for him to mother; and the mother-bird herself and _her_ child flown! And he had brought his punishment on to his own head! Susie waved a rag-doll at him and giggled. "Neddy seeps with Susie!" she cried. "Susie nurse him! Mummy's gone with man!" Brutally Ernie burst into the bedroom. Two people stood beside the bed--his wife and a man; one on either side of it. The man was Joe Burt; the woman Ruth. On the bed between them lay little Alice, wan as a lily, her eyes closed apparently in death. As he entered Joe raised a hushing finger. "It's all right, Ern. She isna dead," said the engineer, comfortably. Ruth, who was the colour of the child on the bed, had turned to him and now wreathed her arms about him. "O Ern!" she cried in choking voice. "I _am_ that glad you've come." For a moment she hung on him, dependent as he had never known her. Then the child stirred, opened her eyes, saw Ernie at the foot of the bed, and smiled. "Daddy," came her sweet little voice. Her eyes fell on Joe; her lovely brow crumpled and she wailed, "Don't want man." "That's me," said Joe gently, and stole towards the door on tip-toe. Ern followed him out. Mr. Trupp met them on the stairs.