All the tenderness and dog-like fidelity of her husband had failed to touch her heart, but now that he had (as she verily believed) slighted her wilfully, and voluntarily left a life of purity for one of guilt, she felt that he was more to her than anyone else in the world, save his child. If his heart, if his instincts, were as evil as she believed, all the more credit to him for the way in which he strove to act honestly, but if on the other hand she had misjudged him and driven a good man into evil by cruel words and harsh looks, then indeed she was to blame. Either way she looked at things now it seemed to her that she was in the wrong, and yet she could not, would not, acknowledge that she had not acted justly. "If he had only waited for a time," she told herself restlessly. "If he he had only shown by his actions that he desired to do right, I would have believed him in time. But to go back to that vile woman after what I said--no!--he is like all the rest--he makes evil his God, and would break my heart, and ruin his child's future, sooner than deny himself the gratification of his brutal instincts." Strong words certainly, but then she felt strongly. She was not a broad-minded woman, for the horror with which her father had inspired her, had narrowed down her views of life to Puritanical exactness. She demanded from the world purity--absolute purity--which was an impossibility. What man could come to a woman and say, "I am as pure in my life as you are"? Not one. Why then did she demand it from her husband? but this was quite another view of the question. Her thoughts had gone from one thing to another, until they had become involved and complex. With a weary sigh she shook her head, as though to drive away all those ideas, and sat down in a low chair, in order to play with the boy. "Sammy! Sammy! You musn't put pitty things in mouse mouse." "Mum! mum!" from Sammy, who was making a bold attempt to swallow his coral necklace. Finding this a failure he crawled quickly across the bearskin, drew himself up to his mother's knees, and stood grinning, in a self-congratulatory manner, on his unsteady little legs. "Come, then," said Alizon, holding out her arms. Frantic attempts on the part of Sammy to crawl up on her lap, ending with a fall, and then a quick catching up into the desired place under a shower of kisses. They made a pretty picture, mother and son; the pale, sad-looking woman, with the fresh, rosy boy, and Eustace paused a moment, at the end of the terrace, to admire it. The boy had caught the tortoise-shell pin in his mother's hair with one chubby hand, and, before she could laughingly prevent him, had pulled it out, so that the fair ringlets came falling over her breast in a golden shower. "Oh, naughty Sammy," she said, gaily tossing him in the air with her two hands. "Look at poor mother's hair--bad child!"