night's moonlight a shadow had crossed.
Half in play and half by accident the boy's
hand had entangled itself in Daisy's drooping
hair. When she had freed herself and
looked up, no one was in sight. Yet this
time the falling of that shadow made her
shiver. Daisy fancied the evening was
turning cold; she made haste to carry the
child in-doors. With long, lingering kisses
on his face, his neck, his hair, his pretty
hands, she trusted him, for a time to the
care of the old woman, who sat in sad
Sunday leisure crying by the kitchen fire.

Yet once more Daisy wandered out.
Within walls there seemed no room to
think. A new idea had taken hold of her,
that she ought to go to Mr. Stewart, to
speak, not to write what she had to say.
Daisy blushed at herself at last, remembering
what foolish fond thoughts about her
child had filled much of a day during
which Kenneth, who loved her so, must
have been suffering such keen anxiety. She
had been planning to get for her child all
manner of beautiful clothes — first, such
pretty thick white embroidered frocks, then
little suits of "real velvet," with tiny
buttons of "real gold"— had been indulging
in such dreams as a child might dream
about her favourite doll, while Kenneth—

"Oh, what a fool I am! what a selfish
fool!" Daisy cried, with burning cheeks.
"A coward, too. I shrink from seeing his
pain, but he won't suffer more because I
see him suffer. I think, indeed, he will
suffer less, from spoken than from written
words. I will go to him. But can I?
Who, now she is gone, will take care of my
child, all the long hours I shall need to be
away?"

A tall shadow of some one coming
towards her round the shoulder of the field
touched her feet. A few seconds after, she
and Mr. Stewart stood face to face. Daisy
flushed, and paled, and flushed again.

"You have found me, then?"

"Yes, I have found you."

"You startled me very much. I was
just thinking of you. I was just resolving
to go back to you, to tell you something
that I thought you would rather hear than
read. To tell you something, and—"
this added with a faltering voice, "to ask
you to forgive me, and to bid you goodbye."

"I don't think there is much you need
to tell me, Daisy. I was here last night
before you. I saw you last night in the
moonlight; I saw you this afternoon in the
sunshine. I don't think there is much you
need to tell me, Daisy."

"You saw me with my son, then," said
Daisy, with a sort of despairing pride.
"Then there is no need to tell I am a
mother, and have been a wife; but how I
was trapped into being Graham's wife, and
how I thought I should always loathe and
hate the child that was his child, and
yet that now I love it; love it, love
it— Only I can tell you these things,
Kenneth."

"Why were they not told sooner, Daisy?
What had I done that you could not trust
me?"

There was something in the simple-
seeming words, or in the tone and look
with which he spoke them, that brought
her, before he could hinder, to the ground
at his feet.

"Have pity. Don't speak to me like
that. Don't look at me like that, as if I
had broken your heart."

He lifted her from the ground and placed
her once more on the sheaves where she had
been sitting with the child. A moment she
gazed up at him, then she covered her face,
and burst into a passion of tears. His face
worked convulsively as he watched her.
When she seemed pretty well, for the time,
to have exhausted her power of weeping, he
said, very gently:

"And so, Daisy, you never loved me?"

That roused her.

"I always loved you: even before I ever
thought you loved me, I loved you!"

"That I cannot understand."

"You are not a woman and a coward!
You don't understand how, even to myself,
I tried to pretend that what was so loathsome
in the past had not been. And could
I speak of it? And to you?"

"It seems you could not, so I say no
more."

"Have pity. Don't speak so, don't look
so, don't mind so much! I was never
worth your having, Kenneth. You know
it now. And now that I am not any longer
alone, now that I have come to love my
little child, you'll try to forget me, Kenneth,
promise you'll try to forget me."

"For yourself then, Daisy, you now feel
the child enough?"

For answer she suddenly dropped her
face into her hands. Already, having again
seen Kenneth's face, and heard his voice,
she knew that the child was not enough.
There was a silence of some length. The
pale autumn sun had softly faded from out
the sky, from off the earth. The mists lay
lake-like in the valleys. Out of a profound
quiet, and sounding as if from far away,
came Kenneth's voice, asking: