“I don’t understand you,” Lydia said patiently and wearily, “I never did.  I should think that sometimes you’d wonder whether you’re right, and everybody else in the world is wrong—­or whether the rest of us know something—­”

Martie generously let her have the prized last word, and went upstairs again.

To her surprise she found Teddy awake.  She sat down on the edge of the bed, and leaned over the small figure.

“Teddy, my own boy!  Haven’t you been asleep?”

“Moth’,” he said, with a child’s uncanny prescience of impending events, “if I were awfully, awfully bad—­”

“Yes, Ted?” she encouraged him, as he paused.

“Would you ever leave me?” he asked anxiously.

The question stabbed her to the heart.  She could not speak.

“I’m enough for you, aren’t I?” he said eagerly.  Still she did not speak.  “Or do you need somebody else?” he asked urgently.

A pang went through her heart.  She tightened her arm about him.

“Teddy!  You are all I have, dear!”

His small warm hand played with the ruffle of her blouse.

“But—­how about Uncle Cliff, and Uncle John, and all?” he asked.  Martie was silent.  “Are you going to marry them?” he added, with a child’s hesitation to say what might be ridiculous.

“No, Ted,” she answered honestly.

“Well, promise me,” he said urgently, sitting up to tighten his arms about her throat, “promise me that you will never leave me!  I will never leave you, if you will promise me that!  Promise!”

He was crying now, and Martie’s own tears started thick and fast.

“I might have to leave you—­just for a while—­” she began.

“Not if you promised!” he said jealously.

“Even if I went away from Aunt Sally and the children, Ted, and we had to live in a little flat again?” she stammered.

“Even then!” he said, with a shaken attempt at a manly voice.  “I remember the pears in the carts, and the box you dropped the train tickets into,” he said encouragingly, “and I remember Margar’s bottles that you used to let me wash!  You’d take me into the parks, and down to the beach, wouldn’t you, Moth’?”

“Oh, Teddy, my little son!  I’d try to make a life for you, dear!”

“And we’d be our family, just you and me!” he said uncertainly.

“We’d be a family, all by ourselves,” she promised him, laughing and crying.  And she clung to him hungrily, kissing the smooth little forehead under the rich tumble of hair, her tears falling on his face.  Ah, this was hers, this belonged to her alone, out of all the world.  “I’m glad you told me how you felt about this, Teddy,” she said.  “It makes it all clearer to me.  You and I, dear—­that’s the only real life for us.  I owe you that.  I promise you, we’ll never be separated while Mother can help it.”

His wet little face was pressed against hers.