Suppose this had been his child she was holding? Would she so easily have
forgiven him? She did not know.
Then she thought of Willy Cameron. The bitterness had strangely gone out of
that, too. Perhaps, vaguely, she began to realize that only young love gives itself
passionately and desperately, when there is no hope of a return, and that the
agonies of youth, although terrible enough, pass with youth itself.
Joe found her there, the chair displaying its usual tendency to climb the chimney
flue, and stood in the doorway, looking at her with haunted, hungry eyes. There
was a sort of despair in Joe those days, and now he was tired and shaken from
the battle.
"I'll take her home in a minute," he said, still with the strange eyes!"
He came into the room, and suddenly he was kneeling beside the chair, his head
buried against the baby's warm, round body. His bent shoulders shook, and
Edith, still with the maternal impulse strong within her, put her hand on his bowed
head.
"God knows I do. I can't get over it. I can't. I've tried, Edith."
He sat back on the floor and looked at her.
"I can't," he repeated. "And when I saw you like that just now, with the kid in your
arms - I used to think that maybe you and I - "
"I know, Joe. No decent man would want me now."
She was still strangely composed, peaceful, almost detached.
"That!" he said, astonished. "I don't mean that, Edith. I've had my fight about that,
and got it over. That's done with. I mean - " he got up and straightened himself.
"You don't care about me."
