His feeling for Esme oscillated between love and hate. He thought of her as his dear wife, and wanted her urgently; again he thought of her as the mother of Sinclair's child, and his heart turned from her, grew hard with bitter jealousy and revulsion. The thought of the child infuriated him--the child who stood between him and the woman whom he loved and who belonged to him. She was his wife; he could claim her. But would she give up the baby for him? Would she forsake all the new love which had come into her life for the sake of the old love, so unexpectedly come back to her, almost like a gift from the grave? He could not tell. Intimately as he knew her nature, confident in his assurance that the best of her love had been given to him, there was yet a side of her character with which he was wholly unfamiliar, the maternal side. He had no means of judging how far her motherhood would influence her. That the maternal instinct was deep-rooted with her he knew; that much she had revealed to him during their married life. She had hungered for a child... He stood still on the sands, looking seaward, with hands clasped behind him, his shoulders bent. He became suddenly conscious of great physical fatigue. He had walked far and for many hours--walked, as he had been thinking, in a circle which brought him back to the starting point, no whit further advanced towards the solving of the problem which harassed his mind, and which, on setting forth, he had determined to solve before another dawn broke. And already the first sign of dawn showed in the pallid skyline where it touched the sea. The feel of the air was fresh and pure; it followed upon the hot darkness of the passing night like a revivifying breath. Hallam felt its coolness on his forehead and lifted his face to meet it, and beheld the stars glowing fainter, and the darkness yielding reluctantly to the grey of the creeping dawn. Another day was advancing upon him, another day of perplexity and doubt and bitter torment; creeping upon him like a cold shadow out of the darker shadows, bringing with it no hope, only a deeper sense of despair. What ought he to do?