"Yes, of course, very. Why?"
"I've wondered—I thought you'd know more about it than I do. Is Archie a good boy?"
"Yes," answered the child. "Mamma!"
"Don't talk nonsense—mamma's over there!" He pointed to the sea. "He talks very well, for his age, as a rule; now he's stupid."
"Oh, let him be," she said, looking at the baby-face with deep eyes; "he's shy, that's all."
"Mamma!" repeated the mite insistently, and laid a hand on her long cloak.
"The thumb's wrong," she murmured after a pause in which the man and woman were both embarrassed; "see, it isn't in!"
She drew the tiny glove off, and put it on once more, taking the fragile fingers in her own, and parting with them slowly. A feeling complex and wonderful crept into her heart at the voice of Tony's child; a feeling of half-reluctant tenderness, coupled with an aching jealousy of the woman that had borne one to him.
They made a group to which any glance would have reverted—the old-young man, who was obviously the father, the baby, and the thoughtful woman, whose costume proclaimed her to be a nurse. The costume, indeed, was not without its influence on Carew. It reminded him of the days of his first acquaintance with her—days since which they had been together, and separated, and drifted into different channels. Having essayed matrimony as a means to an end, and proved it a cul-de-sac, he blamed the woman with whom he had blundered very ardently, and would have been gratified to descant on his mistake to the other one, who was more than ever attractive because she had ceased to belong to him. The length of veil falling below her waist had, to his fancy, a cloistral suggestion which imparted to his allusions to their intimacy an additional fascination; and Archie's presence had seldom occupied his attention so little. Yet he was fonder of this offshoot of himself than he had been of her even in the period that the dress recalled; and it was because she dimly understood the fact that the child touched her so nearly. Like almost every man in whom the cravings of ambition have survived the hope of their fulfilment, he dwelt a great deal on the future of his; son; longed to see his boy achieve the success; which he had come to realise would never be attained by himself, and lost in the interest of fatherhood some of the poignancy of failure. The desire to talk to her of these and many other things was strong in him, but she roused herself from reverie and said good-bye, as if on impulse, just as he was meaning to speak.
"I shall see you again?"