“Oh,” said Anne.

“I hadn’t really.  I was quite happy with my husband.”  She paused, feeling that the ground under her was perilous.  “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, dear Mrs. Majendie.  I’ve never told another soul.  But I thought, perhaps, you ought to know.”

“Why,” Anne wondered, “does she think I ought to know?”

“You see,” Mrs. Gardner went on, “I thought I couldn’t be any happier than I was.  But I am.  Ten times happier.  And I didn’t think I could love my husband more than I did.  But I do.  Ten times more, and quite differently.  Just because of this tiny, crying thing, without an idea in his little soft head.  I’ve learned things I never should have learned without him.  He takes up all my time, and keeps me from enjoying Philip; and yet I know now that I never was really married till he came.”

Mrs. Gardner looked up at Anne with shy, beautiful eyes that begged forgiveness if she had said too much.  And Anne realised that it was for her that the little bride had been singing that hymn of hope, for her that she had been laying out the sacred treasures of her mysteriously wedded heart.

In the same spirit Mrs. Gardner now laid out her fine store of clothing for the little son.  And Anne’s heart grew soft over the many little vests, and the jackets, and the diminutive short-waisted gowns.

She was busy with a pile of such things one evening up in her bedroom when Majendie came in.  The bed was strewn with the absurd garments, and Anne sat beside side it, sorting them, and smiling to herself that small, pure, shy smile of hers.  Her soft face drew him to her.  He thought it was his hour.  He took up one of the little vests and spanned it with his hand.  “I’m so glad,” he said.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She shook her head.

“Nancy—­”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Not to me?”

“No,” she said.  “Not to you.”

“I should have thought—­”

Her face hardened.  “I can’t.  Please understand that, Walter.  I don’t think I ever can, now.  You’ve made everything so that I can’t bear it.”

She took the little vest from him and laid it with the rest.

And as he left her his hope grew cold.  Her motherhood was only another sanctuary from which she shut him out.  There was something so humiliating in his pain that he would have hidden it even from Edith.  But Edith was too clever for him.

“Has she said anything to you about it?” he asked.

“Yes.  Has she not to you?”

“Not yet.  She won’t let me speak about it.  She’s funnier than ever.  She treats me as if I were some obscene monster just crawled up out of the primeval slime.”

“Poor Wallie!”

“Well, but it’s pretty serious.  Do you think she’s going to keep it up for all eternity?”

“No, I don’t, dear.  I don’t think she’ll keep it up at all.”