With the photograph still in her hand, she turned back to the desk and took out a tiny cambric shirt with hemstitched edges, upon which the narrow lace was yellow and worn. As the little garment fell open in her lap she remembered the day she had worked the hemstitching--a hot August day before the child came, when she had lived like a prisoner in the close rooms, sewing for months upon the dainty slips, and dreaming in that subconscious existence in which women await the birth of a new life. She remembered the day of its coming, her agony, and the first cry of the child; then the weeks when she had lain watching the dressing and undressing of the soft, round body, and then the moist and feeble clutch upon her hand. She remembered the days when it did not leave her arms, the nights when she walked it to and fro, crooning the lullaby revived from her own infancy, and at last the hours when she sat in the half-darkness and watched the life flicker out from the little bluish face upon the pillow. "Was that yesterday or eight years ago?" Her tears fell fast upon the tiny shirt, and she folded it and laid it away with the photograph and the other relics--laid away side by side the relics and the recollections covered with dust. She rose to her feet and carried the desk back to its place in the dressing-room. In a moment she returned and stood silently before the fire, her hand resting upon the mantel-piece, her head leaning upon her arm. She was thinking of the two things a woman never forgets--the voice of the man she has loved and the face of her dead child. But when she went to bed an hour later there was a smile on her lips. "I shall see him again," she said. "Perhaps to-morrow." The next day she went to Nevins's studio and sat for the portrait. Her face was aglow and she talked nervously. He noticed that she started at a noise on the stair, and that her attention wandered from his words. He made daring, if delicate, love to her, but she seemed oblivious of it, and, when she rose to go, remarked that he was depressed. In return, he observed that she was feverish, and advised consulting her physician. "Your eyes are too bright," he said. "What is it?" "Your reflected brilliancy, perhaps." "By no means. The lustre is too unnatural." "Then it is sleeplessness. I lay awake last night." "Anything the matter? Can I help you?" She shook her head, smiling. "I am adjusting a few difficulties," she answered; "chiefly matrimonial, but they belong to my cook." He looked at her attentively. "Don't worry," he said. "It is not becoming. The flush is all right, but in time it will give place to discontent. You will sow perplexities to reap--" "Furrows," finished Mariana. Then she nodded gayly. "What a pessimist you are!" she said. "No, I am going to use the best cosmetic--happiness." And she lifted her skirts and descended the stairs.