said he was dead. There was a mistake; and when David drove to the door and came up from the car with a child of four years in his arms, Alice knew the mistake for what it was. Fidelia lived but she was a child again.
She had clear, white skin and dark, red hair and large brown eyes and red lips and a lovely, provoking nose like Fidelia's; and, her arm about David's neck, she clung as only a child of Fidelia's could. She was vivid and warm and she loved life.
He carried her into the house, and with her in his arms he turned to his wife. 'She's my child, Alice," he said. "I'm her father."
"Of course, you're her father," Alice said. "Fidelia, she bore your child, too."
Rays of the rising sun shone into the bedroom window and although Alice had lain awake nearly all the night, the light at once aroused her. Sunrise in winter; and as she lay, facing it, she remembered the winter sunrise when she lay in bed while Fidelia and David were on the shore alone. But now he was beside her; he was her husband.
She turned; he was not beside her; and at once she knew where he would be and she remembered what that was which weighted her heart. Fidelia's child and his was asleep in the next room where the first of her children, and his, was to sleep. He had gone there.
Alice rose and crossed to the door.
He was standing within the baby's room and near her bed; he did not hear his wife, as he gazed at his
