As always happens in such cases it was several minutes after the crash before anyone with an ounce of reason in his head appeared on the scene.

Then a fellow—he was in the dog line, “and knew a thing or two”—dropped in and took a rapid and comprehensive view of affairs, and by the help of infinite blasphemy did what was best under the circumstances.

Strange was only stunned. After a time he sat up, and looked about him.

A howl from Bell struck on his ears. He turned and saw the horses shivering among the broken mass of carriage, and the dog-man rubbing their noses to a soft gurgling accompaniment.

“Where, where?” he asked faintly, and in reply to a pointed finger, lifted himself up with both hands, and groped half-blindly to a huddled-up lump of muslin and lace.

He just knew she was lying there, cold, and white, and moveless. He touched her forehead; it was like marble. He laid his hand on her heart; it was still.

A sudden wonder seized him as to who had undressed and covered her with such lovely decency, and he looked with half vague inquiry at the two women hovering near.

As a matter of fact it was the dog-man who had done it, with his eyes turned on the two women whom he cursed foully the whole time.

“Have you sent for a doctor?” demanded Strange, forcing the dizziness out of his brain.

“Yes, yes,” was yelled from twenty throats, “and here he is.”

He was a sufficiently foolish young man, and seemed floored.

“Live far from here?” he asked.

“In Ebury Square,” said Strange, “is there any danger in taking her so far?”

“None, if conveyed on boards in a four-wheeler.”

Strange saw at once that the dog-man was the only one who had his senses about him; Bell, though absolutely unhurt, was altogether useless, and the other man had been left at the inn.

“You know the horses and cabs here about?” said Strange. “Get the smoothest cab and some boards, and here, you’ll want help, don’t spare tips.”

The man went, and was back before the doctor had made up his mind what to say to cover his ignorance.

A fat woman, who had lent the mattress to cover the boards, and who had been hovering over his wife for some time, here called Strange aside.

“You had better have your own doctor at once,” she said, “that there young man is soft. She wants skill, and, sir,” she added, with a soft twiddle of her thumb, “I have my suspicions.”

Strange looked enquiringly at her, and a cold shiver ran down to his toes.

For hours after she was brought home Gwen lay insensible. The doctor did nothing.

“Her physique alone will help her,” he said, when Strange seemed to demand action of some sort.

“She will regain her consciousness all right,” he said. “There is another complication, I believe,” he added, looking keenly at Strange, “but the treatment of that must come later.”

Again the horrid coldness paralyzed Humphrey’s very marrow.

“In view of this,” the doctor went on, “what about her mother being summoned?”

Strange thought for a moment. Her mother was, of course, quite out of the question, and he remembered that Mrs. Fellowes was ill.

“Is this necessary at once?” he asked.

“No, I will tell you when the need arises—that is, if any should. Her physique would tide over almost anything.”

As the clock began to strike midnight, Strange saw the doctor stoop suddenly, and lay his head on Gwen’s heart, then open her eyes and touch her eyeballs.

When he raised himself his face had altered.

“Now we shall soon see a change,” he said, “perhaps you had better stand back, even the shock of joy might hurt her.”

Strange gave a ghastly grin in the shadow of the curtain.

By a superhuman effort in all those hours of anguished waiting, even when the doctor and the nurse, in their consideration, had left him alone for the purpose, Strange had never once kissed or caressed his wife, or even so much as touched her except in matters of service.

Gwen stirred almost imperceptibly, the doctor looked round the curtain at Strange.

“Touch her, and speak to her very gently,” he said.

He bent gently over her.

“Gwen, wake up, dear, wake up, sweetheart!”

He wondered the next second “why the devil” he said it.

Perhaps the absurdity of the words struck Gwen’s grim sense of humour, she certainly stirred uneasily and made a feeble pathetic little try to throw up the limp hand that lay on the quilt.

Strange moved back under cover of his curtain.

“Good!” said the doctor, “try again.” He was watching Strange’s face with some interest.

“He has aged ten years in eight hours, poor devil!” he thought, then he took a long survey of his patient, “I wonder if she is worth it all, she is a trifle too superb for me! She looks like one of those women who keep their flesh too much under.”

Gradually Gwen’s stirrings grew stronger and more frequent, and at last she opened her eyes slowly and looked out with vague questioning.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“You have been ill, dear.”

“Ill?” she murmured perplexedly. “I want light.”

The doctor moved the screens from before the candles, Gwen raised her head feebly.

“What is it?” she asked again.

The doctor lifted her and gave her a draught he had ready, she was too weak to resist him, and presently she fell off into a drowsy half-slumber.

After what seemed to Strange a lifetime, she again moved, woke, and repeated the old question, this time audibly and with a tinge of imperiousness.

“Ah, she’ll do now,” said the doctor to himself, grinning a saturnine grin, “when a woman shows her pet weakness she’s out of danger.”

He put back the screen. “I am thankful to say,” he said to her, “you are the sole sufferer, and you’ll soon be all right again.”

Humphrey was well then. She shut her dazed eyes and tried to think, but she could only hover off into drowsiness.

After a time she opened her eyes again and said,

“I would like my maid, perhaps you would tell Sir Humphrey that I am better.”

“Your husband hardly requires the information,” said the doctor drily. “I shall leave Lady Strange in your hands, Sir Humphrey, and I shall remain on the premises in case you want me.”

His wife turned her eyes away and began searching for her handkerchief, he stooped and gave it to her.

The sweat still clung to his ghastly forehead and hung on his hair.

“He said you were not hurt,” she said, “you look as if you were.”

“It’s been rather a disturbing day,” he said, with sudden bitterness. “Never mind me, I’ll be as jolly as a sandboy after a bath.”

She turned herself uneasily on the pillow and shut her eyes. It was horrible to have him there above her.

“Poor little child, poor little unfinished thing!” he thought pitifully. “Shall I send your maid, dear?”

“Yes, please, and won’t—oh, won’t you rest?”

“Yes, I’m off,” he said, in his old cheery voice, and he went outside the door and watched there till morning.

She was very white the next morning, and kept falling off into drowsy little sleeps, but she declared she was all right and meant to get up; the necessity of staying in bed was a new one and she loathed it.

She felt more in her husband’s power, lying there ill; she grew suspicious too, for the first time in her life, and set herself to search for meanings in looks.

“I am demoralized,” she kept repeating. Then she turned her face from the light, and neither spoke nor looked except when she absolutely had to.

Strange could make nothing at all of her, and he soon left her for sheer mercy’s sake.

When he had gone she raised herself up and rang the bell.

“Give me what I am to take and then leave me for two hours, I will sleep if I can.”

The girl brought her a bowl of beef-tea, and she plunged heroically into it.

“I am doing my duty,” she said to herself, with a sneer, “but oh, will this liquid never get less? on the contrary, it seems to increase. You won’t let me be disturbed, will you, Gill?” she said.

As soon as the girl had gone she got up and locked the door, then she rolled up her hair, put on a dressing-gown, and sat down on the floor.

“I have two hours in which to have it out with myself—this horror made manifest,” she said. “How was it that this most natural of all complications never entered my head? I wasn’t even warned by those new and altogether abominable feelings of weakness.”

She leaned her head against the ottoman and shivered, then she reached over for a shawl that lay on it, and wrapped herself up in it, but still she shivered.

She stood up and was about to go back to her bed, but she turned sharply round with another shudder, “Bah! I can’t,” she said and throwing a fur rug on to a couch she lay down there and soon grew warm enough to continue her dreary meditations.

“And so I, I, Gwen Strange, will soon be the mother of a child—and Humphrey its father!”

She hid her face in the soft fur. “It is ghastly!” she cried, “it is degradation, feeling towards him as I do, and as I’ve always done! I am debased to think that any man should have the least part of a woman so terribly in his power, when she can’t, can’t, can’t,” she almost shrieked, “give him the best. What do girls know of the things they make lawful for themselves? If they did, if they were shown the nature of their sacrifice, then marriage would cease till it carried love, absolute love in its train. Was I mad, my God! was I mad, with all my boasts of sanity?—Nothing, nothing,” she moaned, “but perfect love makes marriage sacred, nothing, neither God’s law nor man’s, and now the climax has come here in the outward and visible sign of my shame—I have sinned, not only in the present and the past but in the future, I have hurt an innocent unborn creature, I have set a barrier between it and its mother.

“And Humphrey! Now I must sit under those deep all-pervading eyes of his and feel myself ten thousand times his chattel. Now we have a common hope, a common interest, almost a common existence, now every touch of his, every look of his, will burn me and remind me of my shame. Talk of the shame of women who have children out of the pale of marriage, it’s nothing to the shame of those who have children and don’t love. Those others, they have the excuse of love, that’s natural, that purifies their shame; this, our life—the portion of quite half the well-to-do world—this is unnatural, no sin can beat it for cruel baseness!”

She huddled into her rug and lay silent, wild mad thoughts whirling through her brain. Gradually she grew calmer and more reasonable.

“At least I can do one thing,” she whispered.

“I will do all I can to make up to my child for the harm I have done it ignorantly, I will take care of myself, I will do everything I can to bring a natural creature into the world, I will try to protect it from its heredity. I am glad I know, I will do all I can to right your wrong, poor child!”

She waved her hands to and fro in a sort of dumb agony.

“And I could not even kiss your father, I couldn’t even kiss him when we both thought we were facing death!”

She suddenly laughed aloud, a low curious mocking laugh, and put her hands up to her head.

“I must rest!” she cried, “I must not think any more. I will have some more of that draught, it makes thinking a pulpy sweet sort of muddle, it takes all the keen edges off truth. If I did right,” she went on throwing her arms back, “I would go out on a crusade to girls and tell them all the truth, then, let them sin in knowledge not in ignorance, let them know that love, perfect love, is the only sanctification of marriage! Churches and rings are a mere farce.”

She had come to the last shred of her strength; she crept into bed, and rang for her draught.