“I’ll be nicer, now,” admitted Grace.
“Can I hold the baby?”
She took the soft little bundle into her arms and walked to the window with it. Below the first twilight was hanging over the city. It was gray and the lights were beginning to outline the buildings and the streets. Far away on the other side of the city was her man. What did anything matter except that he was there? Problems, their own or society’s, the struggle for existence, birth, illness, death even were glorious if you faced them gravely and with love.
The baby stirred its little fists and she held it tenderly against her. How often she had said glibly that she wanted to live, to have children, to be loved, to work? Yet how much of it had been only talk and how she had shivered when the things that went with children and life and work, pain and disappointment and questionings, had even come near her. For the first time it seemed to her that she really wanted life—wanted it full of joys and pains—wanted it beneath its romantic glamour. She felt her spirit move confidently towards the battle. Not as she had left the stone house that first morning with her heart dancing for the fun and experience. Not as she had left it this afternoon, even, quaking with hopes and fears. Now her heart was beating more steadily, less excitedly, more in time with the heart of the world into which romance and reality unceasingly pump the blood of life.
It was only the mood—the inspiration of the moment—and she knew that it would pass. But it would come again, often, though not often enough to keep the world always sunlit with glow, yet——
Gently she laid the baby in the crib and kissed Grace. “I’ll come again,” she promised, “and now I must go to Jim.”
CHAPTER XXV
BELOW The Journal office the lake was engaged on its evening’s business. Great freighters, with lighted ends throwing their vast lengths into black relief, moved in dignity across the harbor, past the red, revolving lights into the lake. Excursion steamers, brightly lit from top to bottom, looking like moving palaces in the distance, sailed out with their load of pleasure seekers, and little tugs steamed out cheerily to welcome the great boats which would return to harbor that night. Jim watched it as he had watched it so many nights when he was alone. He would rather be here where there was a sense of Horatia’s presence than go home to the lonely rooms which held the things which he had hoped to share with her. He stood quietly before the window, his face saddened as it had looked since the day he read Jack Hubbell’s letter and his eyes were fixed on the moving lake before him as if he drew from it some comfort or strength. He did not hear the steps on the stairs, but another listener would have noticed how eager they were and wondered at the pause before the door. It opened quietly but Jim did not turn. Then he became conscious that someone was looking at him from the door of his room. He turned and saw Horatia. She stood with her eyes upon him as if she were asking something. And for a moment each was stilled by the rush of emotions that the other roused. Then Jim knew what her question was and with his answer came into his own at last. No longer hesitant, no longer fearful, he seemed to know that she had come back to him, needing him as he needed her, seeking his embrace. He held her close, strong and jealous, and she was content. The resignation in his face had turned to a burning hunger.
“You came back to me!”
“I came back to see if you’d have me.”