Anne led Alexis into the library, and fell into a chair before the fire.

“What does this mean? Have you left Claire after all?” Her widened eyes stared at Alexis coldly. So all his good resolutions had meant just nothing? The weakling strain would out. She might have guessed it.

But his gaze met hers unflinchingly. “Claire is dead,” he whispered. The words issued from pale lips almost inaudibly.

Hands pressed against the arms of her chair, Anne started up. Her rising scream was subdued to a whisper. “Claire dead!”

He nodded dumbly. Throwing himself into a chair, he cupped his face in trembling fingers. “Yes, Anne, Claire is dead. And I have killed her as surely as if I’d stuck a knife into her, or put poison into her food.”

Anne’s hands flew instinctly to her mouth to check a cry.

“What do you mean?” Was it possible that——?

His misery-laden eyes encountered the question in hers without comprehending its horrible significance.

“The child. My child,” he replied with tragic simplicity.

“Ah!” Anne leaned her head against the chair-back. She closed her eyes while a species of lucid swoon swept over her. So Claire was dead. They had killed her between them. She and Alexis had killed a woman. For if Alexis was guilty, so was she. Was she not the indirect cause of the girl’s misery? Might not Alexis have gone back to Claire if it had not been for herself? That was problematical and open to doubt, so her uncanny lucidity informed her. But the fact remained they had killed her between them. And yet the very first time that Anne had seen Claire she already bore within herself the seeds of death. Tragic germ of life, that contains death! Poor, poor Claire!

“Poor Claire,” she moaned beneath her breath almost unconsciously. “And—the child?” she faltered, sturdily defiant of her fear.

“Lives.”

“Thank God.” Anne’s face was suddenly wet with tears. “Tell me about it.” From a gulf of despair, Anne’s voice smote upon his misery.

“It was horrible. Her face, her poor little dead face! I cannot sleep at night for seeing it.” He wrung tortured hands.

Anne shuddered. “Tell me about it,” she whispered relentlessly.

He fixed his eyes upon her petrified face with a groan. “Oh, Anne, must I tell you everything? Can’t I spare you anything at all?”

“Tell me everything. I can bear it if you can.” Her pupils narrowed in an agony of pity, as they fell upon his white face.

He continued in a monotonous voice that muffled his suffering as a heavy mist conceals the lip of a chasm. “I was in Chicago when I received the telegram. I cancelled my engagements and rushed back to New York on the next train. But it was too late—Claire was dead.” Head heavy on his chest, his lids drooped leadenly over a waxy face.

“Go on.” Anne’s voice was thick with tears.

“I went to the apartment. Dr. Elliott met me at the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves.” His voice choked and he was silent for a moment. “You don’t know Dr. Elliott, but he was Claire’s friend as well as her doctor. He—he loved Claire.”

Anne showed her astonishment. Was it possible that between them they had driven the child to such cheap consolation? He sensed her terror.

“No, Anne, Elliott was not Claire’s lover. He merely loved her. He would have liked to marry her if she had been willing to divorce me.”

“I see. Poor man!” Anne’s lips grew paler.

Alexis continued in the same emotionless tones.

“Yes, poor wretch. He is a fine fellow, and would have made her happy if it hadn’t been for me. So you understand, of course, how much he hates me, don’t you?”

“Of course, it is only natural.” Her voice was warm with pity.

Alexis glanced up at her with pathetic gratitude. “He met me at the door. He gave me one terrible look, a look that I shall never forget, and said, ‘Your wife is dead.’ I—I don’t know exactly what I did, but I think I leaned against the wall and I must have looked odd, for he cried out, ‘Christ, this is no time to faint, man. Your wife is dead, I tell you, and you’ve got to face it. It’s your own neglect that has killed her!’ Those are the very words he used. They are branded into my brain.”

He stopped short with a moan. Anne uttered a cry of pity.

“Poor boy, how you have suffered! But go on, I must know it all. That is the only way I can help you.”

Dark with pain and compassion, her eyes endowed him with renewed force.

“He told me horrors, Anne, but I deserved them all. He said there was no reason why it should not have been a normal birth, except that Claire had been so weakened by unhappiness that she simply didn’t have the physical stamina to pull her through. And he added that she didn’t want to live, that she felt all along that she wouldn’t. That’s why she refused to go to the hospital. She couldn’t bear the thought of dying there. Anne, think of it. Think of poor Claire, knowing she was going to die, and planning for it like that. Isn’t it too pitiful?”

“Yes, it is horrible,” Anne whispered, “and that is probably what killed her. She was so sure she was going to die, that she made no effort to help herself.”

“That is what Elliott said. There wasn’t much he didn’t say. When he had finished, he swept by me and out of the house and I haven’t seen him since, excepting——” he hesitated painfully, “at the funeral.”

Anne winced. The funeral, how heartrending! She had never thought of that, somehow. But of course there had had to be one. She avoided his eyes that brimmed with knowledge of such horrors.

“I shall not speak of that.” His voice fluted dangerously. “After Elliott left I—I almost ran away myself. But the nurse came into the hall and seemed to expect me to go in and see Claire. I didn’t want to, Anne. It was the most difficult thing I ever did in my life. I somehow felt as if I hadn’t the right to take advantage of her helplessness. But the nurse couldn’t know that, of course, so I followed her into the room.”

He paused and shaded his eyes with quivering fingers. “Anne, she was beautiful. She looked rested as she used to when we were children together. Her hair was braided in two plaits on either side of her face. On one of her tiny hands gleamed the wedding ring. After that first glimpse I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It seemed so pathetic, somehow. So tragic to have her wear it to the very end—and after. It wrenched at my heart. I fell down by the bedside and cried. Afterwards,” he faltered.

Anne prompted him tenderly. “Afterwards?”

“Afterwards, when I was in the hall again, the nurse asked me if I didn’t want to see the child. I—I had forgotten all about it! Just to think of it, Anne, I hadn’t even remembered to ask if it had lived. My own child! What kind of a brute do you think I am?”

“Merely a puzzled and a frightened one, poor Alexis. Certainly not the monster you imagine. Come, tell me about the baby, dear.”

Her compassion fell like oil upon his wounded soul. He loved her for it and for the beautiful calm with which she suppressed her own sorrow, which he sensed strongly beneath his own piercing misery.

“She left me for a moment and returned with a bundle in her arms. The bundle whimpered a little like—like a sick kitten. I was afraid to look, but the nurse thrust it under my eyes and I had to. It was a very ugly baby, Anne. The little face was all screwed up. Pale and puny, not fat and red like the babies in pictures. It made me a little sick at first. I didn’t want to touch it. It was sort of uncanny with its great, hazy eyes staring out at me. However, she laid it in my arms and I had to hold it, for fear it might fall on the ground and break if I didn’t.”

As he stopped for a moment, Anne smiled through tears. How very masculine, even the most feminine of men can be under certain conditions.

A new and softer expression spread over his tired face. The eyes acquired an exalted expression. He continued. “Then an odd thing happened, Anne, a very odd thing! As I held him away from me, he stirred in my arms. I could feel his little feet kick my side, and a tiny fist, like an unopened bud suddenly beat against my breast. A hand, knocking at my heart, the hand of my son! It sent a thrill coursing all over me, Anne. I bent over and kissed the pale, pathetic forehead. And as I met the cloudy eyes, so full of sadness and mystery, I knew that I loved him. And I vowed that I would make it all up to him, cherish him, bring him up to be as different from myself as possible, that he might be both happy and sane. Then, immediately, while he was still in my arms and I could feel him stir against my heart, I thought of you, Anne. I thought of you and knew that you would help us. You, who are so strong, so beautifully sane yourself!”

Alexis rose and threw himself at Anne’s feet. He seized her unresisting hands and covered them with kisses.

“Oh, Anne, take pity on us! Love us if you can. We need you so terribly!”

She caressed his head with compassionate hands. “Yes, dearest, yes.” Her eyes were tragic as she listened. “We need you so terribly.” The words of the Marchesa! She had used them eons ago, when this self-same afternoon was young. Poor Marchesa! Poor Vittorio! They would suffer if they were to lose her. But not like Alexis. Alexis and a baby! Combination of helplessness! If she, Anne, were to forsake them, what would become of them at all? And she owed it to Claire. It was the only reparation she could make for the injuries she had been forced to inflict upon her. To look after Alexis, to cherish him as the dead girl had longed to do herself so that his marvelous art might not be stilled by sorrow, to give her child, poor mite, the love and happiness its mother had craved and never received. Anne’s path seemed to lie clear before her tear-washed eyes. Once more, Vittorio would have to be sacrificed. This time forever. But he was strong. His grief would never break him. He would make of it a staff to further progress. But Alexis—for Alexis, her refusal might mean return to that dark Limbo from which she had rescued him once before. And to that fate, so much more bitter than death, Anne could never condemn him.

She pressed her cheek against the head that lay so humbly upon her knees. She raised his face and looked down into the tragic young eyes. A long look, a giving look, a look that poured divine essence of compassion from her very soul, in a sort of spiritual transfusion, until the face between her hands became suffused with rapture.

“No Alexis, do not be afraid, I shall not desert you now. Nothing but your own will can ever separate us.”

He looked up at her with the humility of a dumb beast. “Does this mean you are really going to marry me, Anne?” he asked in hushed tones.

She nodded gravely. “If you wish it.”

The rapture on his face brimmed over into tremulous laughter.

“Anne, Anne!” He was about to take her in his arms, but she repulsed him with gentle dignity.

“No, Alexis, not now dear.”

He understood. A subdued expression veiling his joy, he sat down quietly at a little distance. Anne looked at him gratefully. After all, she could always count upon his delicacy, which was a great comfort.

“Where is the child?” she inquired, making an effort to shoulder her new responsibilities.

He looked pleased. “In the apartment in Gramercy Park. He has a trained nurse, and is getting along very well. I had a cable yesterday. Oh, Anne, will you try to love him?”

Anne smiled through the leaden lassitude that had suddenly fallen upon her. “I shan’t have to try. He is little and helpless and yours.”

“Anne, my beautiful one, my angel!”

This time she did not evade the effusion, but resigned herself to the hungry young arms.

Much later, after Alexis had gone, and the fire had smouldered into a mound of white dust, Anne went to the telephone, and sent Vittorio the wire which was to nullify so completely her summons of a few short hours ago.