It was left at that. They would send him word.... He planned, in the back of his mind, to buy the coat for Eleanor but not to give it to her—not just yet. He would buy it, he thought, and put it away; and when William Archer arrived, he would bring it out and throw it about her shoulders. He liked to fancy her in it and to think how it would help her disappointment about Annabel.... She could enjoy it to the full. She would not be afraid of injuring Annabel or her morals—when William Archer was there. But no word came and the months slipped by. VIII THEN, one evening, Richard More came home from the office and found a new look in his house. He knew it, even before he caught a glimpse of a nurse’s white cap hurrying through the lower hall and before the doctor met him at the foot of the stair. “I am just going,” said the doctor. “Going—?” Richard caught himself. “Has it come?” The doctor smiled at him—at the ignorance and youthful credulity of it. “I shall be back in an hour or two. Everything is going splendidly. Your wife has courage!” And he was gone. “Courage—Eleanor? Of course she had courage! She was made of it. What did the doctor know about Eleanor’s courage?” He hurried up the stairs... the fleeting sense of life in his quick steps. She turned to him with the little upward twist of her lip. “It’s all right, Dickie!” There was no mystery, no courage—only Eleanor’s competent look as if there were dusting to be done, and men-folks were better out of the way.... And yet, behind it, he had a sense that she withdrew to some high place, to a remote, inaccessible cliff, and looked down on him with wide eyes. He wandered miserably about the house; a part of the night he slept, and part of it he spent at the telephone, sending orders for the doctor and nurse, and answering the door-bell when the response came.... All through the early hours he longed fiercely for the arrival of William Archer. Then, as the night went on, he lost interest in William Archer and his coming, and would have welcomed Annabel.... And he cast aside even the thought of Annabel. He longed only for an end to the misery.... And when at last the doctor said in businesslike tones, “A fine girl, Mr. More!” he only blinked at him, and his tousled hair took on a more rebellious twist. “A fine girl! What of it!... What had girls to do with this?” “A fine girl” did not connect herself, in any vague way, with Annabel or with life.... Probably a new girl for the kitchen....! Well, they needed a girl! They needed a dozen girls! He wandered out miserably—and the doctor followed him with a quick look and something in a glass. “Here, drink this!” And Richard drank it—and looked at him stupidly. Something was happening inside his brain—things were growing more settled and luminous. A smile wreathed his face. “It’s a girl, is it?” he cried jubilantly. The doctor nodded. Richard More clapped him on the shoulder. “Good work!” he said.