Her eyes rested upon it with a quick sense of its beauty; then the sunset lost itself in the round of her thoughts.  She had missed Dudley, and she was glad that he was coming home to-night.  For the first time during the fifteen years of her marriage she experienced a vague uneasiness at his absence.  A year ago she had not known a tremor of loneliness when he was away—­but then the child was unborn.  Now, in some subtle way, the child’s existence was bound and rebound in Dudley’s.  The two stood together in her thoughts; she could not separate them—­the child was but a smaller, a closer, a dearer Dudley—­a Dudley of her dreams and visions, the ideal ending to life’s realities.

As she sat beside the window, her eyes wandering from the sunset to the baby asleep in Delphy’s lap, she wondered that she had never before suffered this incipient thrill of nervous fear.  Was it that her affection for her child had revivified all lesser emotions?  Or was it that with supreme love came the vague, invincible perception of supreme loss?  Did great happiness bear within itself the visible reflection of great sorrow?  Her life before this had been more peaceful—­it had been also less complete.  With the coming of her heart’s desire had awakened her heart’s inquietude—­both had dawned after years of restless waiting and uncertain wandering.  It was borne in upon her, with something like a pang, that the fulness of life had blossomed for her only when her first youth was withered, when she had long since relinquished high expectations or keen desire.  She had set her young mind and her quick passion on a far-away good, she had shed vain tears over the lack of it; yet, in the end, she found compensation where she would least have sought it—­in the things which made up her destiny.  She had learned the wisdom of acceptance, and Fate had rewarded her, not by yielding to her what she had called her heart’s necessity, but by fitting her heart to the necessity that was already hers.  She had not known the fulfilment of her young ideals, but she was content at last with an existence which was a personal surrender to older realities.  For herself she asked now only busy days of domestic interests and the unbroken serenity of middle age—­but, despite herself, another life was before her, for she lived again in her child.

The twilight fell.  She put her work aside, and, coming to the hearth rug, took the baby from Delphy’s arms.  He was in his night-dress, and his big blue eyes were drugged with sleep.  As Eugenia took him he gave a whimpering cry and clutched her with his little hands before he nestled into the lace at her bosom.

Some hours later, while Eugenia awaited Dudley in the dining-room, Miss Chris came in to see that his late supper was in preparation.  “The train is over-due,” she said, with a glance at the clock.  “He will be hungry when he gets in.  He always is.”

Eugenia looked up anxiously.  “I am beginning to feel alarmed,” she replied.  “Can anything have happened, do you think?  He is an hour late.”