difficult to control herself in the presence of others, to hide or account for the terror that possessed her.  Only when she thought of the little life that in another month she would have brought into the world, that would be nestling against her, did she feel a glow of comfort.  Nothing disturbed her joy in that, which she had perforce to pretend was the cause of her depression.  As she lay now, with the wrongs done to her and by her stirring in her slow bewildered brain, she banished them by thoughts of that which was to be hers—­that solace so far sweeter than the little animals with which she had hitherto filled her days.  Poor Wanda, who from much petting had grown to fawn on her almost as much as upon Ishmael, was neglected now, and did not even stretch her woolly length beside the bed, but roamed, alone and melancholy, in the passage, waiting for the well-known loved footstep of her master.

Phoebe curved over in bed, and began to pretend to herself, as when a small child she had been wont to do for the first hour in bed every evening—­planning small pleasures, triumphs over the other children she knew—­and as when a girl she had been used to lie and imagine thrilling episodes with some dream lover.  Now she pretended her baby had already come and was lying beside her; she bunched a fold of bedclothes to make her pretence the more real, and lay cuddling it, her eyes closed so that the sense of sight should not dissipate her dreams.  No man had any part in her vision of the future with her baby; it was to be hers alone, and she pictured a blissful period when she played with it, dressed and undressed it, lived for it.  Somehow she imagined that all her difficulties would cease with its birth, and both the torment of Archelaus and the presence of Ishmael, which now left her so unstirred it wearied her, faded away.  Although she told herself she hated men and the harm they did, she hoped her child would be a boy, because she was of the type of woman, even as Annie had been, that always wants a boy.

She kept her eyes shut and caressed the bundle she had made beside her, and tried to forget her physical condition and her mental worry in the joy she was forecasting.

“Phoebe ... lil’ ’un ...  I’m come,” said a voice from the other side of her bedroom door.  Her lids flew up; a great spasm of terror shot through her, making her sick and setting her heart pounding.  She saw the last warm glow of the evening in the square of sky, its light tingeing the white bedroom with fire; she saw the bundle in the curve of her arm was only a roll of sheet and blanket whose striped edge of pink and blue somehow for an irrational moment engaged her attention, so vivid had her dreaming been, so incongruous was this sudden recall.  Then she turned over in bed towards the door, panic in her breast, and her whole body swept by the hot waves of fear.  She had locked the door, as she always did now, but the tones, soft as they were, had power to frighten her even through the stout wood.