He adventured down the passageway that terminated in a large room full of sunlight. He saw his wife standing in the middle of this room looking about her with a curious expression of wistfulness. The little hall was carpeted, but she heard him almost as soon as he saw her; she would have known those light swift footsteps in a marching army. He was inside the room before she could reach the doorway and close it behind her and astonished to see a deep blush suffuse her face. His quick darting glance took in his surroundings as he shook hands with her. The room was a nursery. “I had two beds put in here and have just seen that they were taken out,” stammered Ida. Her embarrassment was communicable, but he said gruffly as he walked to the window, “Didn’t know the Murphys had children.” “Oh, yes, they had two little ones. Seven in all. I think it odd they should have left the toys here even if they are rich enough to buy toys every day. There is something sacred about a child’s toys.” Ida was merely talking against time, but she hardly could have said anything better calculated to arrest his attention. He turned and looked at her in astonishment. “Do you mean to intimate--that you wish you had children? You?” Ida’s brain as well as her body was very weary, but it sprang to action at once. “Oh, yes,” she said intensely. “Oh, yes! And I might have had two! They would be wonderful in this house.” “But----” He cast about desperately. “With two children you could not have gone to Europe.” “That wouldn’t have mattered.” “But--don’t you realise that it is this last year of unusual advantages that has developed you so--so--remarkably? You hated children----” “And do you suppose it was Europe that made me want children?” “Oh, of course, nothing is as simple as that. You were taken out of yourself, out of your narrow self-sufficient little life; all your fine latent powers were developed----” “But not altogether by Europe! Still, I don’t deny that it woke me up, gave me not one new point of view but many, developed me, if you like that better. Would you like lunch earlier? You get up at such unearthly hours----” “I’m not hungry. I want to talk to you. That is what I came for. Won’t you sit down--no, not here! Let us go where there are comfortable chairs. I--I am tired.” “Very well. Let us go down to the library.” As she walked before him he noted that her superb body, which usually looked as if set with fine steel springs, was heavy and listless. The masculine looking room below restored his balance. “You don’t look as well as usual,” he remarked, as he threw himself into the deepest of the chairs. “Yesterday was a hard day, and you had had those men on your hands for----” “I am tired,” said Ida briefly, “but it doesn’t matter. What do you want to talk to me about?”