Her hands clasped his very tightly.  There was a brief silence before—­with a touch of shyness—­she spoke again.  “You have never been—­really happy—­all your life.  You don’t know the meaning of the word—­yet.”

“Don’t I?” He stood up, still holding her hands.  “I thought I’d sampled everything.”

“No,” she said.  “No.  There is—­one thing left.”

“What is that?” he said.

She stood again in silence, looking at him.  Then, slowly, “You have never yet touched the joy of loving someone better—­far better—­than you love yourself,” she said.  “I think that is the greatest joy that God can send.”

He bent towards her with a certain eagerness.  “Maud, I could have loved you like that—­once.”

She shook her head and her smile was sad.  “No, my dear, believe me!  I couldn’t have inspired it in you.  I was too selfish myself in those days.  Some other woman will teach you that now.”

“I wonder,” said Charles Rex, half-mocking and half-touched.

She slipped her hand through his arm, turning from the subject with a faint sigh.  “Well, come and see the baby!  He’s very lovely.”

“From your point of view or Jake’s?” questioned Saltash.

She laughed.  “From mine of course.  He is going to be just like Jake.”

“Heavens above!  I pity you!” ejaculated Saltash.  “You’ll never cope with two of ’em!  They’ll crush you flat.”

She drew him from the terrace into the quiet house.  “Don’t be absurd,
Charlie!  This boy of ours is to be the prop of our old age.”

He went with her jesting, but when they entered the silent nursery in which the two youngest children lay sleeping, his trifling ceased and he trod with reverence.

They stood together in the dim light beside the baby’s cot, and Saltash looked down upon the flushed baby face with a faintly rueful smile upon his own.

“There is something in being married and done for after all,” he said.

Over the old baby, Betty, now two years old, he stooped and lightly touched the fair silken hair, but he did not kiss her though the child was sleeping deeply.

Later he went alone into the adjoining room where slept the two elder children, Eileen aged five, and Molly who was not yet four.  Maud did not follow him, and presently he came back, treading softly, the flickering night-light throwing odd shadows on his ugly face, and they left the room together.

In the passage he turned to her abruptly.  “Then I may send that child to you tomorrow?” he said.

“Why not bring her?” said Maud smiling.

He shook his head.  “No.  I’ll come over one day—­on Sunday perhaps—­and see you all again.  I won’t—­handicap her—­by bringing her.”

She understood him, and gave him her hand, but the fervour with which he received and kissed it surprised her into drawing it away more quickly than she had intended.