All day long Susan sits with her little boy, sometimes, when his aches are worse than usual, hushing him against her breast, and breathing soft childish songs into his ear to soothe his sufferings and keep up his heart, whilst her own is breaking. For is it not her fault that he is suffering now? If she had not forgotten him—this little lamb of her dead mother’s fold, left by that dying mother to her special care—he might be now as well and strong as all the rest of them. * * * * * She is sitting with him now in the schoolroom, lying back in the old armchair quite motionless, for the suffering child within her arms has fallen into a fitful slumber, when the door is opened, and Crosby enters. He had left the Park about a month ago, and had not been expected back for some time—not until the spring, indeed—but something unknown or unacknowledged even by himself had driven him back after four weeks to this small corner of the earth. ‘Sh!’ breathes Susan softly, putting up her hand. A warm flush has suddenly dyed her pale face, grown white through grief and many watchings. Her surprise at seeing Crosby is almost unbounded, and with it is another feeling—of joy, of comfort, of support. All through her strange joy and surprise, however, she remembers the child, and that he sleeps. Of late his slumbers have grown very precious. Crosby advances slowly, carefully. This gives him time to look at Susan, to mark the sadness of the tender face bending over the sleeping child, to mark also the terrible lines of suffering on his. But his eyes wander always back to Susan. In her grief, how beautiful she is! how human! how womanly! And with the child pressed against her breast. Oh, Susan, you were always pretty, but now! The grief is almost divine. Oh, little young Madonna! But, then, to have Susan look like that! He wakes from his dreams of her beauty with a sharp anger against himself. And now only one thing is uppermost in his mind—Susan is suffering. Well, then, Susan must not be allowed to suffer. ‘He is ill?’ he says quickly, in a low tone. ‘Oh, so ill! He—he has been ill now for three weeks. The cold, that hurt him.’ She lifts her face for a moment, struggles with herself, and then lowers her head again, as if to do something to Bonnie’s little necktie, lest he should see her tears. ‘Tell me about it,’ says Crosby, drawing up a chair and seating himself close to her and the boy. There is something so friendly, so sympathetic, in his action that the poor child’s heart expands. ‘Oh, you can’t think how bad it has been!’ she says. ‘This dreadful cold seems to get into him. Speak very low. He slept hardly two hours the whole of last night.’ ‘How do you know that?’—quickly. ‘How should I not know?’—surprised. ‘I slept with him. Who should know if I didn’t?’ ‘Then you did not even sleep two hours?’