It had seemed natural enough at first.  Both were surprised, of course, at the unexpected meeting, but soon they had found themselves talking calmly enough.

But the entry of the child had brought a touch of something strange and unspeakable—­it seemed to change them all at once to another footing, bringing up a reckoning out of the past.

True, she had wondered now and again if fate would ever bring her face to face with Olof again—­if he would ever see the child.  But she had put the thought aside as painful to dwell upon.

And now, here they were, those two; no stranger but would at once have taken them for father and son, though in truth there was no kinship between them.

It was as if she were suddenly called upon to answer for her life.

First it was her son that questioned her, standing in the doorway, looking at both with his innocent eyes.

And then—­a triple reckoning—­to Olof, to her husband, and to God.

Until that day, her secret had been known to none but God and herself.  And now—­he knew it, he, the one she had resolved should never know.

And the third stood there too, like one insistent question, waiting to know....

“Daisy....?”

She would have told him, frankly and openly, as she herself understood it.  How she had longed for him and the thought of him, and never dreamed that she could ever love another!  Until at last he came—­her husband.  How good and honest and generous he had been—­willing to take her, a poor cottage girl, and make her mistress of the place.  And how she herself had felt so weak, so bitterly in need of friendship and support, until at last she thought she really loved him.

No, she could not tell him that—­it would have been wrong every way—­as if she had a different explanation for each.

And to Olof she said only:  “I loved him, it is true.  But our first child—­you saw yourself.  It’s past understanding.  It must have been that I could not even then forget—­that first winter.  I can find no other way....”

Olof sat helplessly, as in face of an inexplicable riddle.

Then she went on, speaking now to God, while Olof was pondering still.

“You know ... you know it all!  I thought I had freed myself from him, but it was not so.  My heart was given to him, and love had marked it with his picture, so that life had no other form for me.  And then, when I loved again, and our first-born lay beneath my heart....  All that was in my thoughts that, time ... and after, when the child was to be born ... the struggle in my mind ... how I did not always wish myself it should be otherwise—­dearly as I have paid for it since....”

And at last, in a whisper, she spoke to her husband: 

“It was terrible—­terrible.  For your sake, because you had been so good—­you, the only one I love.  It was as if I were faithless to you, and yet I know my heart was true.  I would have borne the secret alone, that is why I have never spoken of it to you before.  But now I must—­and it hurts me that any should have known it before.”