He turned and saw something—­something queer and red between two folds of flannel, something that stirred and drew itself into puckers, and gave forth a cry.

And as he touched the child, his strength melted in him, as it melted when he laid his hands for the first time upon its mother.

CHAPTER XIX

After the birth of her child Anne was restored to her normal poise and self-possession.  She appeared the large, robust, superb creature she had once been.  The serenity of her bearing proclaimed that in her motherhood her nature was fulfilled.  She had given herself up to the child from the first moment that she held it to her breast.  She had found again her tenderness, her gladness, and her peace.

Majendie had waited for this.  He believed that if the child made her so happy, she could hardly continue to cherish an aversion from its father.

In the months that followed he witnessed the slow destruction of this hope.  The very fact that Anne had become “normal” made its end more certain.  There were no longer any affecting moods, any divine caprices for him to look to, nor was there much likelihood of a profounder change.  Such as his wife was now, she always would be.

She had settled down.

And he had accepted the situation.

He had had his illusions.  He loved the child.  It was white, and weak, and sickly, as if it drew a secret bitterness from its mother’s breast.  It kept Anne awake at night with its crying.  Once Majendie got up, and came to her, and took it from her, and it was suddenly pacified, and fell asleep in his arms.  He had risen many nights after that to quiet it.  It had seemed to him then that something passed between them with the small tender body his arms took from her and gave to her again.  But he had abandoned that illusion now.  And when he saw her with the child he said to himself, “I see.  She has got all she wanted.  She has no further use for me.”

Thus the child that should have united separated them.  Anne took from him whatever small comfort it might have given him.  She was disposed to ignore those paternal passages in the night-watches, and to combat the idea of his devotion to the child.  That situation he had accepted, too.

But Anne, in appearing to accept everything, accepted nothing.  She was conscious of a mute rebellion, even of a certain disloyalty of the imagination.  She disapproved of Majendie more than ever.  She guarded her own purity now as her child’s inheritance, and her motherhood strengthened her spiritual revolt.  Her mind turned sometimes to the ideal father of her child, evoking visions of the Minor Canon whom her soul had loved.  Lent brought the image of the Minor Canon nearer to her, and towards his perfections she turned the tender face of her dreams, while she presented to her husband the stern face of duty.  She had never swerved from that.  There was no reason why she should close her door to him, since the material bond was torture to her, and the ramparts of the spiritual life rose high.  Her marriage was more than ever a martyrdom and a sacrifice, redemptive, propitiatory of powers she abhorred and but dimly understood.