"It was all-important, Ronnie; and it _was_ there." "It was--_where_?" asked Ronnie. "Under Aubrey's foot.... Oh, hush, darling, hush! We must not say hard things of a man who has confessed, and who is bitterly repentant. I can't tell you the whole story now; you shall hear every detail later; but he saw it fall from the letter, as you opened it. He was tempted, first, to cover it with his foot; then, to put it in his pocket; and, after he had read it, he wrote to me implying that you had told him the news it contained; so, when you arrived home, how could I possibly imagine that you did not know it?" "Did not know _what?_" asked Ronnie. She drew a folded paper from her pocket. "My darling, this will tell you best. It is the note intended to reach you at Leipzig; it is the note which, until this afternoon, I had all along believed you to have received." She put her note into his hand. "I hope you will be able to read it by this light, Ronnie. I was very weak when I wrote it. I could only use pencil." Ronnie unfolded it gravely. She knelt, with bowed head, beside him. She dared not watch his face. She heard his breath come short and fast. He moved his knees, and let go his 'cello. The Infant of Prague slipped unnoticed to the floor. When he read of the birth of his little son, with a hard choking sob, Ronnie turned and gathered her to him, holding her close, yet eagerly reading the letter over her head; reading it, to its very last word. Then, dropping the letter, he clasped her to him, with a strength and a depth of tenderness such as she had never before known in Ronnie. And his first words were not what Helen had expected. "Helen," he said, with another desperate tearless sob, "oh, to think that you had to go through _that_--alone!" "My darling boy," she answered, "don't worry about that! It is all over, now; and it is so true--oh, _so_ true, Ronnie--that the anguish is no more remembered in the greatness of the joy." "But I can't forget," said Ronnie--"I shall never forget--that my wife bore the suffering, the danger, the weakness, and I was not there to share it. I did not even know what she was going through." "Ronnie dear--think of your little son." "I can think of nothing of mine just yet," he answered, "excepting of my wife." She gave in to his mood, and waited; letting him hold her close in perfect silence. It was strangely sweet to Helen, because it was so completely unexpected. She had been prepared for a moment of intense surprise, followed by a rapture of pride and delight; then a wild rush to the nursery to see his first-born. She was quite willing, now her part was over, that her part should be forgotten. It was as unexpected as it was comfortingly precious, that Ronnie should be thus stricken by the thought of her pain, and of her need of him to help her bear it. At last he said: "Helen, I see it all now. It was the Upas tree indeed: utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish!"