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Rh race, Lucia's baby, with a gurgle of delight, stretched out a plump dimpled hand toward the man who pushed his carriage.

Then came the flashlight. Lucia looked at Maud's baby, and there shot into her mind the knowledge that it was Charlie's; Charlie looked at the dimpled hand of Lucia's child, and remembered that it was hers. Then the eyes of a father and a mother met, and Lucia knew that into her mind had come the thought, "If he was the father of my child, I should understand."

And what she would understand was that which shone in Maud's eyes and smiled in her mouth as she looked at her child, which was Charlie's.

She knew then what she had missed. But Edgar's child and hers put out dimpled fingers towards the man who pushed it. She knew again, and more distinctly, what she had missed. But the thought of stale and endless repetitions left her; the flashlight hinted at something new, something she had seen and observed, but never yet experienced.

Late that evening, after dinner, they all went out on to the terrace. There were some dozen people in the house, and it was by accident, as far as Lucia was concerned, that the man who let himself down from the seat on the terrace wall just as she came out, last of her guests, arm in arm with Maud, was Maud's husband.

She put her disengaged hand into his arm, and all three stood there together, she in the middle between Lucia and Charlie.

"And so here we are, all three," she said; "but for the moment it is going to be all two—you and Lucia. Blessed Philippino has been crying, and I must go up and see what is the matter. Don't come up, Chubby. I shall be down again soon."

Maud went back through the drawing-room, where the servants were beginning to put out card-tables, leaving the other two on the terrace. The rest of the party, all intimate, had strolled on a little ahead, and the noise of their talking and laughing came in gradual diminuendo. But they would be back in a few minutes, for bridge, now that Edgar was not here to keep up the tone of conversation, was the vague order for the evening. They would be alone for only the briefest space. Then Lucia spoke

"Maud is altogether wrapped up in Philippino," she said. "She doesn't ever give a thought to you now, Chubby. I should take steps about wifely desertion if I were you. Edgar is just as bad. He comes down from Saturday to Monday only, as you