"Yes."
He took her up to them. They were asleep. Little Barbara lay curled up in the big bed, right in the middle of it where her dreams had tossed her. Janet, in the cot beside her, lay very straight and still.
Robert signed to Kitty to come near, and they stood together and looked first at the children and then into each other's faces. Kitty was very quiet.
"Do you like them?" he whispered.
Her lips quivered, but she made no sign.
He stooped over each bed, smoothing the long hair from Janet's forehead, folding back the blanket that weighed on Barbara's little body. When he turned, Kitty had gone. She had slipped into her own room.
She waited till she heard Robert go away. The children were alone in there. The nurse, she knew, was in Jane's room across the passage. Jane was probably telling her that her master was to be married very soon.
She looked out. The door of Jane's room was shut; so was the door of the children's room through which Robert had gone out. The other, the door of communication, she had left ajar. She went softly back through it and stood again by the children's beds. Janet was still sound asleep. Her fine limbs were still stretched straight and quiet under the blanket. Her hair was as Robert's hand had left it.
Kitty was afraid of disturbing Janet's sleep. She was afraid of Janet.
She stooped over little Barbara, and turned back the bedclothes from the bed. She laid herself down, half her length, upon it by Barbara's side, and folded her in arms that scarcely touched her at first, so light they lay on her. Then some perverse and passionate impulse seized her to wake the child. She did it gently, tenderly, holding back her passion, troubling the depths of sleep with fine, feather-like touches, with kisses soft as sleep.