Mariana had enjoyed the portrait and the sittings. They diverted her thoughts from the groove of the ordinary and gratified to a small extent her social instinct. When it was finished, and Mr. Nevins no longer came, she relapsed into listlessness. It was the friction of the outside world she needed. Hers was not the nature to develop through stagnation. In barren soil she wilted and grew colorless, while at the touch of sunshine she expanded and put forth her old radiance. Anthony, watching her, would become oppressed at times with the thought that this thin and fragile woman, dragging through her irksome round of duties, anaemic and hollow-eyed, might by the magic of wealth and ease mature into a passionate, lithe, and gracious creature, of which she was now the wraith--and yet which even now she suggested. For the furnace through which she had passed, in robbing her of freshness and bloom, had been unable to destroy her vague and ineffable charm. "She is a woman ruined," he said, bitterly, and he said it with a dull aching in his heart. To him Mariana, emaciated and unresponsive, was still the Mariana to be possessed and held with burning desire. The small clashes of temper, the long silences, the apparent indifference, had been powerless to weaken the force of his love. It was still indomitable. One night, upon going to his room, he found her in her night-gown kneeling on the hearth-rug. From her breathing he knew that she was asleep, and it was a moment before he aroused her. In the dim light she resembled a marble figure of prayer, her cheek resting upon her hand, the lashes fallen over the violet circles beneath her eyes. Beside the bed, the baby lay in its little crib, the restless fists lying upon its breast, a fine moisture shining like dew upon the infantile face. He stood looking at it, a thrill shooting into his heart. For the first time he realized with acuteness a positive feeling for the child--realized that it was his as well as Mariana's, that it had a claim upon him other than the claim of Mariana, that he was not only the husband of a woman, but the father of a child. Bending over the crib, he touched with one finger the crumpled rose-leaf hands, with the soft indentation around the wrist as if left by a tightly drawn cord. He smiled slightly. Then he crossed over and kissed Mariana. She opened her eyes, yawned, stretched her arms above her head, and rose. "I have really been asleep," she said. "You were so tired," answered Algarcife, and his voice was limpid with tenderness. "It kills me that you should work so, Mariana." Mariana rested against him for an instant. Then she went to the crib, and, raising the baby's head, smoothed its pillow. As she laid it down again she pressed the cover carefully over its arms; then, throwing herself into bed, she fell asleep with a sigh. CHAPTER XVII