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Rh They were stretched out in two long chairs, the whisky decanter and a box of cigars near by. It was late; Teresa was supposed to have gone to bed; they were too busy talking to observe her silent passing outside. Now and then she heard a fragment of their talk—they were globe-trotting, and their reminiscences of youth and many lands were familiar echoes. Basil showed Page a Japanese pipe, a light dainty thing, such as the women smoke, and Teresa could see the words form on his lips, and the smile, and she could see the picture—the little pale woman, formal and soft, waking in the night, emptying the pipe with a few breaths, and laying it down And all at once the feeling had come to her: "He is one and I am another—I am forever outside, and he is a stranger to me, in spite of all. But this, this child of mine, is really mine. I shall understand it, it will comfort me, it will belong to me. I shall not need him so much." And the feeling had brought her a new peace, and the power to look at Basil more impersonally, to be grateful for his deep and real love of her, to think of him with almost maternal tenderness. The child, too, in time, would have needs that she could not satisfy, and live its life away from her—and yet it, too, she thought, would always love her.

But between her and Basil something had happened—the first weakening of the physical