—both of them would be compelled to speak of the years past, of the gigantic mistake of their lives, the mistake which had given him, their child, his life! Oh, how they felt it, both of them, that past which never died, sunk in a bottomless pit, but always haunted them, haunting them more seriously, more menacingly now that Addie was growing older and had been unhappy and wanted to know! Oh, how helpless they both felt, while they stared at each other in despair because they did not know how to spare their darling, how to spare him, even though they would spare him to-day, how—how indeed?—to spare him to-morrow! And, because their sorrow was the same, the same sorrow for their darling, for their comrade, their consolation, their passion, it was as though, for the first time, after years and years, they were nearing each other and for the first time bearing together a part of the heavy burden of life that pressed upon their small souls. How were they to spare him, how were they to spare him?
Finding no solution, they each went their own way again, their eyes still blank with helplessness, their hearts heavy with despair. What had become of the melancholy contentment that had brought Constance her gentle happiness? And, when they met again at meals and the boy, the sensible, merry little comrade of old, who had always enlivened those meal-times, sat in silence, ate in silence, with his serious boy’s face, firm in outline already and yet with the soft bloom of the child upon it, and his steel-blue eyes full of thought, then they would tim-
