Rapidly, now, Sarah completed her dressing. With a care strange to her, she tidied her hair, making a ribbon serve as fillet for it. And then, she threw open the shutters. The golden light swept in upon her face. Two heavy lines within each cheek, a furrow hinting on the forehead came out, as her mood faded before the day’s more real brilliancy. So Sarah tore off the ribbon. With a last effort, she returned to her hair. With her brush, she tried to bring back to it a show of wave and of resiliency. But her touch was heavy; and the opaque mass failed to respond. The woman who can feel no decoration in her hair is miserable. For here, in most women, lurks the aura of their desire to please. The sense of beauty there lifts the plain woman above a too stifling consciousness. The sense of failure, there, will weigh on the fairest woman like a pall. Sarah’s next move was the gesture of a housewife, stubbornly resolved not to become a dowd. Sighing, she smoothed out her skirt over her hips. And then, she went to look after Quincy. As she entered the little room which had been Marsden’s, a flood of vague longing swept over her. She caught up the infant and strained him against her breast. Seated on his cot, she swayed widely to and fro, her child’s body warm upon her own. There was a bitter satisfaction in her embrace. With it, she had almost forgotten Quincy. He was, for the nonce, a mere luscious symbol of her dreary untempered life. He was to be hugged, to be felt, to be experienced. She was holding him too tight. And he began to cry. In an instant, Sarah recalled the fact of her son. She held him now, carefully, tenderly. And the child’s crying ceased. She looked down upon his rosy, wrinkled face. She kissed his eyes--bright blue they were. She drew delight in cradling his dimpled fists in her own outdrawn hands. And then, she began to speak to him. “Excuse me, dearest,” she said, “excuse me for everything. Excuse me, not only for having squeezed you so hard, but also for having given you birth.” As she was silent, she wept. A deep sense of pain seemed to envelop them together. And in that sense, they became almost one, again. “Quincy, my baby,--forgive me,” she whispered. She placed her wet face against his and held it there, waiting for his response. And so she remained--swayed in her uncharted feelings--agony and a sweet joy of life. And the strange conflict that swayed her rocked her child to sleep.