“I’ve weakened him.  All along I’ve weakened him.  I’ve fussed over him like a hen after her duckling when it takes to the water.  I wouldn’t let him swim for fear he’d get drowned.  And so—­he just flops about and looks disgusting.  I’ve made him run away from temptation.  That was because I couldn’t keep on being disappointed in him.  Because I couldn’t face the disgust of him coming home dirty and smelly and saying filthy things to me—­and sleeping close to him.  Andrew,” she called to the baby, who looked at her solemnly and went on playing with the little pebbles at his feet.  “Listen, darling, what mother’s telling you.  ’He that fights and runs away lives to fight another day.’  I made him run away from whisky, and all the time it’s throwing down challenges to him, putting out its tongue at him, pulling rude faces at him.  I’ve been protecting myself from the things drunkards’ wives have to put up with—­Oh, but I was trying to protect him, too!”

The last words were wrung from her in self-defence.

“What I ought to have done was to take the whisky, make him look at it all round and tell it, with his own conviction and not mine, to go to hell.  I ought never, never to have protected him, and made him a hothouse plant.”

As she said it she knew, incontrovertibly, that she could never do anything but protect people.  It was the way she was made.  And she became very frightened that, some day, she might make Andrew a hothouse plant, too.

She looked at the thin, grey-backed book again and more light came to her.  She flung herself on the ground, her face on the soft grass.  The baby, looking at her wonderingly, crawled towards her, and snuggled up to her, his wet little hands on her neck.

“Oh make me weak!” she cried as though praying to the earth and the air and the water to batter her.  “Make me weak—­smash me and tear me up, so I’ll have to be taken care of.  Then I’ll let him be strong instead of me!  Oh but it’s cruel!  Why should one person be weak to make another strong?  Why can’t we march on in armour, shoulder to shoulder?”

And then came the thought that, perhaps, had not her father and Louis been the men they were she would never have learnt to wear her armour.  The wisdom of nature that made the protective coverings of birds and beasts had given her her armour—­made her grow her armour out of her surroundings.  This thought made her gasp.  She sat still a very long time letting it sink in.

“I wonder,” she said slowly, looking out over the lake, a pool of fire in the setting sun, “if that’s why Jesus died.  He didn’t want to, I think.  He loved the quiet things of the world, little children and talking to friends, and doing things with his hands.  I wonder if he had to die, when his teaching was finished, so that those others he loved might not get to depend on him too much?  We’re so fond of getting propped.  I don’t think people ought to have a Good Shepherd.  Unless they only want to be silly sheep all their lives.  And here I’ve been Good Shepherding Louis all this time till now he can’t get along without my crook round his arm.”