“David had a fire-escape fitted the other day. He went down it himself just to learn the way; and this infant must needs follow. He’d never been on a ladder in his life, but he climbed cheerfully out of the window . . .” “Trusting to the special providence that looks after all O’Ranes,” I put in. “By the mercy of heaven a policeman caught him; but if he behaves like that now . . .” “He looks like keeping you fully occupied.” “I can do what I like with him at present,” she answered, “because he realizes I’m only a woman, and I can get on the soft side of him. When he’s old enough to see that women can be more easily bullied than men, more easily hurt . . . I don’t envy his wife. I don’t envy any wife.” “Yet if all marriages were dissolved by act of parliament . . .,” I began, as she led me downstairs. “Should I take David on again? I wonder! He’s the only man I’ve ever loved. . . . What fools we women are! And what fools men are! They don’t want a woman to have a will of her own; and, when she echoes their will, they find her insipid. And what a fool I’ve always been! Once I thought it would be wonderful to run away . . . as I did. But that was only a wonderful fit of bad temper,” she added with the candour that she always employed in discussing herself. “And one that you’ll never repeat.” “No. In those days I was so hungry for children that I thought myself quite immodest: if I’d had my first one earlier, we should never have had our great tragedy. Now that I’ve got two, you need never be afraid I shall run away again even if David ties me to the bed and beats me. I honestly, honestly don’t think of myself any longer except through them. I want them to have the best chance in life: all that you and Jim and my brothers had. They must go to the best schools, the best universities; they must never be driven down the wrong road like so many boys because they haven’t the money to go by the right one. They must be _secure_.” . . . Her face darkened; and she turned to the fire. “David won’t promise me that. My father can’t afford it.” . . . I believe that, if her husband could have seen Sonia at that moment as I saw her, he would have compromised with his insurgent conscience. Once before, when he came back from France, I had seen her, as now, on her knees; pleading, as now, for the privilege of serving him and, as now, wholly forgetful of her too insistent self. “He’s not easy to move when he’s made up his mind,” I said, with memories of our conversation earlier in the afternoon. Sonia shook her head ruefully: “Don’t I know that? You remember when that unemployment deputation came to see him? We’ve had about three a day ever since. Does that influence him? The press camps on our doorstep. He’s besieged in his office. This afternoon that man Griffiths came here again.” “What did you do with him?” Her patience suddenly deserted her: