The bud of her beauty had at last
unfolded: her vague enigmatical gaze had given way to the clear look
of the woman whose hand is on the clue of life.
"_She's_ not living for anything but her own happiness," I mused,
"and why in heaven's name should she? But Ned--"
"My wife," Halidon continued, his eyes following mine, "my wife
feels it too, even more strongly. You know a woman's sensitiveness.
She's--there's nothing she wouldn't do for his memory--because--in
other ways. . . . You understand," he added, lowering his tone as
she drew nearer, "that as soon as the child is born we mean to go
home for good, and take up his work--Paul's work."
Mrs. Halidon recovered slowly after the birth of her child: the
return to America was deferred for six months, and then again for a
whole year. I heard of the Halidons as established first at
Biarritz, then in Rome. The second summer Ned wrote me a line from
St. Moritz. He said the place agreed so well with his wife--who was
still delicate--that they were "thinking of building a house there:
a mere cleft in the rocks, to hide our happiness in when it becomes
too exuberant"--and the rest of the letter, very properly, was
filled with a rhapsody upon his little daughter.
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