She was even farther away from him when his self-consciousness, awakening with the small hours, drew him to think of the future--of his and of hers. Like many another man in those years, his courage ebbed at the false dawn, and he questioned Fate aloud as to whether he would see another--whether he would ever again know the comfort of her. The simple cunning of her kind led her to propose arrangements to meet him again. This in turn led to the question of where she was to be found. This drew from him anxious questions, that flattered her immensely by the importance he attached to her welfare, but brought back unpleasantly into prominence that other whom she was trying so hard, so unconsciously, to forget. She burst out with a few fierce words, stamping and stamping on that dead image of love to make it disappear from view. It was when she did this, brutally dismissing from memory that spoiled child of her affections, that her new, good, well-behaved child gave her the first taste of his imperfections. He was solicitous, punctilious to a degree, questioned if he ought to take what was Georges’. She would have been angry with him in another moment had not a stronger, surer, more positive instinct prevailed. They had such a little time, might never have another. She wound her bare arms round his head and stifled his questions and doubts against the present reality of her tangible self. And surely she was right. In all those years of loss and waste it occurred to her naturally to build and replace what she could, and all the love and care she could not give to the children she might not bear, she gave to this grown-up child, who needed it, and took it willingly enough, once he ceased to think. * * * * * In the gray dawn she was up and about, making coffee, heating water for him to shave, helping clean his endless buckles and straps. She let him out in good time for his train, and sweetened her kiss with the eternal hopefulness of that “à bientôt,” “until soon,” that is the happiest thing in French farewells. Then slowly, carefully, she made herself ready for the day at the office, proud of the dark touches under her eyes, of the mat-pallor of her skin, of the little smiles that curled the corners of her mouth. And many a man, seeing her, wished he had been the source of the deep secret satisfaction she seemed to give herself that day.