“If you are going to show me some brute’s photograph I simply refuse to look,” Michael said.  “All that part of your life is over and we are going to begin afresh, darling one, no matter what you did.”

But she crept nearer to him as she opened the case—­and her voice was full and sweet, shy tenderness as she blurted out: 

“It is not a brute’s photograph, Michael, it is the picture of your own little son.”

“My God!” cried Michael, the sudden violent emotion making him very pale.  “Sabine—­how dared you keep this from me all these years—­I—­” Then he seized her in his arms and for a few seconds they could neither of them speak—­his caresses were so fierce.  At last he exclaimed brokenly, “Sabine—­with the knowledge of this between us how could you ever have even contemplated belonging to another man—­Oh! if I had only known.  Where is—­my son?”

“You must listen, Michael, to everything,” Sabine whispered, “then you will understand—­I was simply terrified when I realized at last, and only wanted to go back to you and be comforted, so I wrote a letter at once to tell you, and as Mr. Parsons was in England again I sent it to him to have it put safely into your hands.  But by then you had gone right off to China, and Mr. Parsons sent the letter back to me, it was useless to forward it to you, he said, you might not get it for a year.”

Michael strained her to his heart once more, while his eyes grew wet.

“Oh, my poor little girl—­all alone, how frightfully cruel it was, no wonder you hated me then, and could not forgive me even afterward.”

“I did not hate you—­I was only terrified and longing to rush off somewhere and hide—­so Simone suggested San Francisco—­the furthest off she knew, and we hurried over there and then I was awfully ill, and when my baby was born I very nearly died.”

Michael was wordless, he could only kiss her.  “That is what made him so delicate—­my wretchedness and rushing about,” she went on, “and so I was punished because, after three months, God took him back again—­my dear little one—­just when I was beginning to grow comforted and to love him.  He was exactly like you, Michael, with the same blue eyes, and I thought—­I thought, we should go back to Arranstoun and finish our estrangements and be happy again—­the three of us—­when you did come home—­I grew radiant and quite well—­” Here two big tears gathered in her violet eyes and fell upon Michael’s hand, and he shivered with the intensity of his feelings as he held her close.

“We had made our plans to go East—­but my little sweetheart caught cold somehow—­and then he died—­Oh!  I can’t tell you the grief of it, Michael, I was quite reckless after that—­it was in June and I did not care what happened to me for a long while.  I just wanted to get back to Moravia, not knowing she had left Paris for Rome—­and then I crossed in July—­and came here to Brittany and saw and bought Heronac as I told you before.  I heard then that you had not returned from China or made any sign—­and it seemed all so cruel and ruthless, and as there were no longer any ties between us I thought that I would crush you from my life and forget you, and that I would educate myself and make something of my mind.”