_De quels ravissements nous privent nos intempérances._ JOUBERT. WHEN Annette's baby--a boy--was born, Gertrude was the first to go and see it. She took with her a woollen bonnet and a horn spoon. Having become capitalists with the enormous sum that had come to Annette, they had left their lodgings for a little house in a row of little houses each of seven rooms and a scullery. They had a little maid, who opened the door to Gertrude. She was a tiny wizened creature but very voluble. Gertrude was not a yard inside the house when she had a full description of the baby, its layette, Annette's condition and appearance, and the devotion of Bennett, who, she said, "never had no eyes for nothink 'cept 'is ugly little wife." Gertrude was shown upstairs, to find Annette sitting up chattering to an enormously fat woman, who was introduced to her as Mrs. Entwistle. They were talking about Serge, of whom the fat woman expressed the most glowing admiration. The baby, a very little one, ugly and blotched, was handed to Gertrude, and she was properly ecstatic over it. Mrs. Entwistle said: "Eeh! Ow I did 'ave to slap 'is little buttocks to make 'im cry!" "Slap?" said Gertrude, rather horrified. "Eeh! Miss, didn't ye know that? Well, I never. Sometimes you 'ave to fair leather into 'em." Gertrude held the baby in her arms and hugged him close to her breast. She was feeling very mournful, and envy tugged at her heart. She said: "It's a very little house you live in." "Isn't it? But we love it. It's just big enough for the three of us." "How--how is Bennett?" "Oh! He's very well, and he gets more money now, though still very little. I'm afraid we shall never have very much as long as he remains in business, and if he left it I suppose we should have nothing. But we don't think about it--much." "You must be very happy." Very mournfully Gertrude said this. She was disappointed. She had fancied that when she held Annette's baby in her arms she would feel all kinds of beautiful and exalted emotions. It was certainly pleasant to feel its warmth, and to hold it, so helpless as it was, gave her a genial sense of protection, but she was wanting, hoping for more than that. And when Annette replied that she was very happy--she looked it too--Gertrude realised painfully that she was brutally indifferent. The starving cannot rejoice with the well-fed. Gertrude felt her life trickling away through her fingers: worst of all, though she was not conscious of it, her desire for life was ebbing away from her. All the bitterness, all the hunger, all the hard envy in her heart she translated into one word: "Old." She said to herself: "I am getting old." . . . Having come to a concise and rounded thought she was pricked by it into revolt, and she said gently, at first, to Annette: