Alicia was lying on the sofa--Peter staring at the distant trees, did not see them but that scene--her magnificent health had made lying on sofas very uncharacteristic, and Odd had been struck with a gentle sort of compunction at the sight of the bronze head on the pillow, the thin white cheek. His heart was very heavy. The paternal instincts are not said to be strong; Odd had not credited himself with possessing them in any elevated form. Yet, now that the poor baby was dead, he realized how keen had been his interest in the little face, how keen the half-animal pleasure in the clinging of the tiny fingers, and as he looked at the baby in its small white coffin, he had realized, too, with a pang of longing that the little white face, like a flower among the flowers about it, was that of his child--dead. On that morning he bent over Alicia with something of the lover's tenderness in his heart, though Alicia had very nearly wrung all tenderness out of it. "My dear girl, my poor, dear girl," he said, kissing her; and he sat down beside her on the sofa and smoothed back her hair. Alicia looked up at him with those wonderful eyes--looked up with a smile. "Oh, I shall be all right soon enough, Peter." Peter put his arm under her head and looked hard at her--her beauty entranced him as it had done from the beginning. "Alicia, Alicia, do you love me?" His earnestness pleased her; she felt in it her own power. "What a thing to ask, Peter. Did you ever imagine I didn't?" "Shall it bring us together, my wife, the death of our child? Will you feel for my sorrow as I feel for yours, my poor darling?" "Feel for you, Peter? Why, of course I do. It is especially hard on you, too, losing your heir." Her look, her words crushed all the sudden impulse of resolve, hope, love even. "My heir?" Peter repeated, in a stumbling tone. "That has nothing to do with it. I wasn't thinking of that." "Weren't you?" said Alicia, rather wearily. She felt her weakness, it irked her, and her next words were more fretfully uttered-- "Of course I know you feel for me. Such a lot to go through, too, and for nothing." She saw the pain setting her husband's lips sternly. "I suppose now, Peter, that you are imagining I care nothing about baby," she remarked. "I hope I am not a brute," said Peter gloomily. "You hope _I'm_ not, too, no doubt." "Don't, don't, Alicia." "I felt awfully about it; simply awfully," Alicia declared. Odd, retracing the sorry little scene as he looked from his library windows, found that from it unconsciously he had dated an epoch, an epoch of resignation that had donned good-humor as its shield. Alicia could disappoint him no longer.