Many things occurred during those years that widened the horizon for them all.  Betty’s first child came and went, almost taking the life of the young mother with it.  Before the possible calamity Brace stood appalled, and both Conning and Lynda realized how true a note the girl was in their lives.  She seemed to belong to them in a sense stronger than blood could have made her.  They could not imagine life without her sunny companionship.  Never were they to forget the grim dreariness of the once cheerful apartment during those days and nights when Death hovered near, weighing the chances.  But Betty recovered and came back with a yearning look in her eyes that had never been there before.

“You see,” she confided to Lynda, “there will always be moments when I must listen to hear if my baby is calling.  At times, Lyn, it seems as if he were just on ahead—­keeping me from forgetting.  It doesn’t make me sad, dear, it’s really beautiful that he didn’t quite escape me.”

“And do you go to The Refuge to think and look and listen?” Lynda asked.  For they all worried now when Betty betook herself to the little house.

“Not much!” And here Betty twinkled.  “I go there to meet Betty Arnold face to face, and ask her if she would rather trade back.  And then I come trotting home, almost out of breath, to precious old Brace; I’m so afraid he won’t know he’s still the one big thing in the world for me.”

This little child of Betty’s and Brace’s had made a deep impression upon them all.  It had lived only three days and while it stayed the black shadow hanging over the mother had made the baby seem of less account; but later, they all recalled the pretty, soft mite with the strange, old look in its wide eyes.  He had been beautiful as babies who are not going to stay often are.  There were to be no years for him to change and grow and so loveliness came with him.

“I reckon the little chap thought we didn’t want him,” Brace choked as he spoke over the small, cold body of his first-born, “so he turned back home before he forgot the way.”

“Don’t, brother!” Lynda pleaded as she stood with Truedale beside him.  “You know the way home might have been longer and harder, by and by.”

“I wish Betty and I might have helped to make it easier; for a time, anyway.”  The eternal revolt against seemingly useless suffering rang in the words.

And that night Truedale had kissed Lynda lingeringly.

“Such things,” he said, referring to the day’s sad duties, “such things do drag people together.”

After that something new throbbed in their lives—­something that had not held sway before.  If Betty looked and listened for the little creature who had gone on ahead, Lynda listened and looked into what had been a void in her life before.