Nancy came in with a scuttle of coals. “The lil one's asleep,” she said, going down on her knees at the fire. She had left the door ajar, and Pete's song was rolling into the room—
“The first was lovely Nancy, so delicate and fair,
The other was a vargin, and she did laurels wear.”
“Grannie bathed her, and she's like a lil angel in the cot there,” said Nancy. “And, 'Dear heart alive, Grannie,' says I,' the straight she's like her father when she's sleeping.'”
Nancy brushed the hearth and went off. As she closed the door, Pete's voice ebbed out.
Philip's lips trembled, his eyes wandered over the floor, he grew very pale, he tried to speak and could not. All his self-pride was overthrown in a moment The honour in which he had tried to stand erect as in a suit of armour was stripped away. Unwittingly he had been laying up an account with Nature. He had forgotten that a sin has consequences. Nature did not forget. She had kept her own reckoning. He had struggled to believe that after all he was a moral man, a free man; but Nature was a sterner moralist; she had chained him to the past, she had held him to himself.
He was still by the fire with his head down. “Did you know this before you were married to Pete?” he asked, without looking up.
“Hadn't I wronged him enough without that?” she answered.
“But did you think of it as something that might perhaps occur?”
“And if I did, what then?”
“If you had told me, Kate, nothing and nobody should have come between us—no,” he said in a decisive voice, “not Pete nor all the world.”