She failed to comprehend any part of the sermon which the gray-haired minister was delivering in that far-off, detached tone. She noticed some rings on his stout fingers and wondered how such mere trinkets could be worn by an ordained helper of the despairing and the God-forsaken. As soon as the service was over she hastened homeward. She told herself that she would act at once and face her husband with a demand that either he or she should perform the bounden duty. But as she entered the door and heard the voices of the two men in the dining-room, and smelled the smoke of their cigars, her courage oozed from her. She could not tell them both. Her talk must be for William alone; it would be for him to inform his uncle, and he would do it. William, once shown the right road, would take it. She knew him well enough for that. His wavering for the past year had been like hers, but when he knew all and was faced with the call of justice, as she was facing it, he would obey. At the foot of the stairs in the hall she paused. Should she go back to the two men, or--It was the rippling laugh of her child up-stairs, who was being amused by a maid, the joyous clapping of a small pair of hands, that drew Celeste up the carpeted steps and into the child's presence. "Oh, mother, see what she has put on me!" Ruth cried, gleefully, as she sprang into the middle of the room robed in a filmy pink gown which had been made for her use in a class in interpretative dancing, and held out the skirt, forming wings like those of a fairy floating over beds of roses. A circle of artificial flowers rested on the golden tresses. Ruth's eyes were sparkling with delight as she bowed low in one of the postures she had been taught, and then glided gracefully into her mother's arms. "Oh, we've had so much fun! Haven't we, Annette?" "Madame will pardon me," the French maid said. "I know it is Sunday, but she was so full of joy when she waked that--" "It doesn't matter," Celeste said. "You may go. I'll dress her for dinner myself." And as she did it, that morning of all mornings to be remembered, Celeste was the most pitiable of all pitiable creatures. Her coming sacrifice was not like that of Abraham in his offering of Isaac to his God, for, while he was a child of God, Abraham was not a mother. "Justice must be done!" she kept saying. "The happiness of two against the misery of one--two against _two_, in reality; but I don't count, I mustn't count. Charlie said to Michael that nothing counts that we do for ourselves, and this protesting ache within me is self, for my baby is myself. Sweet, sweet little daughter! Mother has the blade ready and must thrust it deep into your joyous heart. Oh, if my cup would only pass, and my will might be done instead of God's!" She held her child on her knees as she took off the pink symbol of dawn and robed her anew. She was laying her child on an altar before God and no sacrificial ram was in sight. CHAPTER XXXII