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.

Majendie was aware that she had now no attitude to him but one of apathy touched by repugnance. He accepted the apathy, but the repugnance he could not accept. The very tenderness and fineness of his nature held him back from that, and Anne found once more her refuge in his chivalry. She made no attempt to reconcile it with her estimate of him.

By the time the child was a year old their separation was complete.

As yet their good taste shrank from any acknowledgment of the rupture. Majendie did his best to cover it by a certain fineness of transition, and by a high smooth courtesy punctiliously applied. Anne responded on the same pure note; for, tried by courtesy, her breeding rang golden to the test.

She was not a woman (as Majendie had reflected several times already) to trail an untidy tragedy through the house; she had never desired to play a passionate part; and she was glad to exchange tragedy for the decent drama of convention. She was helped both by her weakness and her strength. Her soul was satisfied with its secret communion with the Unseen; her heart was filled with its profound affection for her child; her mind was appeased by appearances, and she had no doubt as to her ability to keep them up.

It was Majendie who felt the strain. His mind had an undying contempt for appearances; his heart and soul had looked to one woman for satisfaction, and could not be appeased with anything but her. Among all the things he had accepted, he accepted most of all the fact that she was perfect. Too perfect to be the helpmate of his imperfection. He shuddered at the years that were in store for him. Always to do without her, always to be tortured by the fairness of her presence and the sweetness of her voice; always to sit up late and rise up early, in order to get away from the thought of them; to come down and find her fairness and sweetness smiling politely at him over the teapot; to hunt in the morning-paper for news to interest her; to mix with business men all day, and talk business, and to return at five o'clock and find her, punctual and perfect, smiling in her duty, over another teapot; to rack his brains for something to talk about to her; not to be allowed to mention his own friends, but to have to feign indestructible interest in the Eliotts and the Gardners; to dine with the inspiration drawn again from the paper; and then, perhaps, to be read aloud to all evening, till it was time to go to bed again. That was how his days went on. The child and Edie were his only accessible sources of consolation. But Edie was dying by inches; and he had to suppress his affection for the child, as well as his passion for the mother.

For that was the thorn in Anne's side now. The child was content with her only when Majendie was not there. The moment he came into the room she would struggle from her mother's lap, and crawl frantically to his feet. Her tiny face curled in its white, angelic smile as soon as he lifted her in his arms. Little Peggy had an adorable way of turning her back on her mother and tucking her face away under Majendie's chin. When she was cross or ailing she cried for Majendie, and refused to take food or medicine from any one but him.

He was sitting one day in the nursery with the little year-old thing on his knees, feeding her deftly from a cup of warm milk that she had pushed away when presented by her mother. The nurse and Nanna looked kindly on the spectacle of Majendie's success, while his wife watched him steadily without a word. The nurse, presuming on her privileges, made an injudicious remark.

"She won't do anything for anybody but her daddy. I never saw such a funny little girl."

"I never saw such a shocking little flirt," said Majendie; "she takes after her mother."

"She's the living image of you, ma'am," said Nanna, conscious of the other's blunder.

"I wish she had my strength," said Anne, in a voice fine and trenchant as a sword.

Nanna and the nurse retired discreetly.

The parents looked at each other over the frail body of the little girl. Majendie's face had flushed under his wife's blow. He knew that she was thinking of Edith and her fate. The same malady had appeared in more than one member of his family, as Anne was well aware. (Her own strain was pure.) Instinctively he put his hand to the child's spine. Little Peggy sat up straight and strong enough. And another thought passed through him. His eyes conveyed it to Anne as plainly as if he had said, "I don't know about her mother's strength. She's the child of her mother's coldness."

He set the child down on Anne's lap, told her to be good there, and left them.

Anne saw how she had hurt him, and was visited with an unfamiliar pang of self-reproach. She was very nice to him all that evening. And out of his own pain a kinder thought came to him. He had been the cause of great unhappiness to Anne. There might be a sense in which the child was suffering from her mother's martyrdom. He persuaded himself that the least he could do was to leave Anne in supreme possession of her.