Only one thing—besides her anxiety for his health—troubled her. With all his tenderness to her, and his renewed love, he still remained a stranger to his children. He seemed proud of their healthy beauty, and glad of Mary's happiness in them; but their nearness bored and tired him, and they, quick to perceive this, became hopelessly unresponsive in his presence. Ellie would back solemnly away from the approaching chair, and Rosamond would hang mute upon her mother's shoulder. “It's strange,” Mary said to the Sparrow, who was quick to notice any failure to appreciate her adored charges; “they're his own, and yet he hasn't the key to them. I suppose it's because he's a genius, and too far apart from ordinary people to understand just little human babies.”
The thought stirred faintly the memory of her old wound.
V
That Christmas, for the first time in its history, the Byrdsnest held high festival. House and studio were decorated, and in the afternoon there was a Christmas-tree party for all the old friends and their children.
The dining-room had been closed since the night before in order to facilitate Santa Clans' midnight spiritings.
When all the guests had arrived, and Stefan had been wheeled in from the studio, the mysterious door was at last thrown open, revealing the tree in all its glory, rooted in a floor of glittering snow, with its topmost star scraping the ceiling.
With shouts the older children surrounded it; Ellie followed more slowly, awed by such splendor; and Rosamond crept after, drawn irresistibly by a hundred glittering lures.
Crawling from guest to guest, her tiny hands clutching toys as big as herself, her dark eyes brilliant, her small red mouth emitting coos of rapture, she enchanted the men, and drew positive tears of delight from Constance.