"America!" she said bitterly. "That endless country… with so many people in it. Does she really need you, just one among her countless children?"

"She needs them all. America only won her freedom because all those who wanted it joined together to make one people! I come of that free people… one grain of sand on the seashore, yet that grain, carried away on the winds, is lost forever."

Marianne was weeping now, with little, hard, gasping sobs, and clinging with all her strength to the virile form that was a solid wall to her, a refuge that she was about to lose once more, and for how long? For she had lost, she knew that. She had always known it. From the first words he had uttered, she had known that she was fighting a losing battle, that she could never hold him.

As though he had divined her thought, he murmured into her hair: "Be brave, my sweet. We shall be together again soon. Even if the chances of war mean that I cannot be there to greet you when you land at Charleston, everything will be ready to welcome you. To welcome you both, you and the baby. There will be a house, servants and an old friend of mine to look after you…"

Marianne had stiffened at the mention of the child and once again she avoided speaking of him, concentrating on her own misery instead.

"I know… but you will not be there," she mourned. "What will become of me without you?"

Gently but firmly he loosened the clinging arms which held him and stood up.

"I'm going to tell you," he said.

Before Marianne could recover from her surprise or make a move to stop him, he had walked quickly from the room, leaving the door open behind him. She heard him go swiftly across the boudoir, calling: "Jolival! Jolival! Come here!"

A moment later he was back with the vicomte on his heels. But what made Marianne gasp was the realization that, in his arms, with infinite care, he held a small white woolly bundle from which emerged two tiny, moving pink blobs.

The blood drained from Marianne's face as it came to her that Jason was bringing her the child whose very presence filled her with loathing. She cast about her wildly, seeking childishly for a way of escape, for somewhere to hide from the peril advancing on her, wrapped in a snow-white shawl and carried in the arms of the man she loved.

Coming to the foot of the bed, he tossed back the lock of black hair falling over his eyes with an automatic gesture and beamed triumphantly at the frightened girl.

"This is what is going to become of you, my sweet. An adorable little mother! Your son will keep you company and stop you thinking too much about the war. You can't imagine how quickly this little fellow will make the time pass for you."

He was coming around the bed toward her… In another moment he would be laying the child down on the counterpane… His blue eyes were alight with mischief and in that minute Marianne almost hated him. How could he?

"Take that child away," she articulated between gritted teeth. "I have already said I don't want to see him."

There was a sudden silence, a silence so vast and crushing that Marianne was frightened. Not daring to raise her eyes to Jason's face for fear of what she might see there, she went on in a much milder tone: "Try to understand what he means to me. I—I can't help it."

She had been prepared for an outburst of anger, but Jason's voice remained quiet and perfectly level.

"I don't know what he means to you—and I do not need to know. No, no, don't try to explain. Jolival has done so more than adequately and I am quite aware of the circumstances of the child's conception. But now I am going to tell you what he means to me. He's a fine, strong, healthy little man, something you have made very slowly and brought into the world with suffering that would have served to wipe out the worst of sins, if sin there was, and make it holy. And, most of all, he is your child—yours and only yours. He even looks like you."

"That's true," Jolival put in nervously. "He looks like the portrait of your father."

"Come, look at him at least," Jason persisted. "Have the courage to look, if only for a moment, or else you're not the woman—"

You're not the woman I thought you were. That was what he meant. Nor did his meaning escape Marianne. She knew his demanding private code of honor too well not to have scented danger. If she were to refuse to do as he asked, which he evidently regarded as a perfectly natural thing, a quite normal reflex, she would run the risk of seeing the place she held in his heart shrinking a little. Already she had some reason to think that place less than it had been. For too long life had conspired to show her to Jason in her least attractive light.

She surrendered unconditionally.

"Very well," she sighed. "Show him to me if you insist."

"I do insist," he said gravely.

Marianne had expected that he would show him to her in his arms so that she could take a quick glance, but instead he bent swiftly and set down the trifling burden on one of her pillows, close by his mother's shoulder.

She shrank a little at the unexpected contact but managed to bite back the exclamation of annoyance that rose to her lips. Jason was looking at her, studying her reaction. So she sat up cautiously and turned a little on her side. But when her eyes rested for the first time on her son, the shock was not what she had expected.

Not only was there nothing in the baby to recall his horrible sire, but he was truly such a perfect little cherub that in spite of herself her heart missed a beat.

Swaddled in his absurdly complicated assortment of garments, the little prince was sleeping with total concentration. His tiny fingers lay spread like a starfish against the woolen shawl. A cloud of fine black hair showed faintly under his cap of Valenciennes lace, curling lightly above a small round face which had the downy softness of a peach. He seemed to be having pleasant dreams because the corners of his tiny mouth quivered slightly as if he were already trying to smile.

Marianne stared at him, fascinated. The look of the Marquis d'Asselnat was unmistakable. It came chiefly from the shape of the mouth, the determination about the tiny chin and the promise of intelligence in the high, sculptured brow.

Looking at the small person she had feared so greatly, Marianne felt as if something inside her were struggling to spread its wings and be free. It was as though somewhere, in the secret depths of her being, there was another birth about to take place, unknown to her. A strange force, formed of a conspiracy between mind and heart, was welling up in her whether she would or no.

Almost fearfully, she put out a cautious finger and touched one of the little hands as softly as a butterfly. The movement was too shy to be called a caress. But the tiny fist stirred suddenly. The miniature fingers uncurled and then closed firmly around their mother's with a tenacity unexpected in a newborn baby.

At that something broke in Marianne. As though a window had been violently flung open by a gale of wind, the thing that had been struggling inside her took flight and soared heavenward, flooding her with a joy that was almost painful in its intensity. Tears sprang to her eyes and poured down her cheeks in a refreshing stream, washing away the bitterness and disgust, all the mire which had clogged Marianne's soul for so long and stifled it. What did it matter now how the child had come into her life and, like a tiny, indomitable tyrant, had demanded her very flesh and blood. She discovered with a wondering amazement that he was hers, flesh of her flesh, breath of her breath, and that she acknowledged him for what he was.

The two men standing on either side of the bed held their breath and dared not move a muscle as they watched the miracle taking place before their eyes, the miracle of the awakening of mother love. But when, still held prisoner by her son, she began to cry, Jason bent again and lifted the baby gently to place him in his mother's arms. This time they closed and held him.

The little silky head settled of its own accord against the warm breast in a gesture so instinctively caressing that it took Marianne's breath away. Then she looked up at Arcadius, who was weeping unashamedly, and at Jason, who was smiling with eyes she saw sparkling through her tears like diamonds in the sun.

"You need not look like that," she said softly. "Your little plot has succeeded. You have won."

"It was no plot," Jason said. "We merely wanted you to agree that your son is the most beautiful baby in the world."

"Well, you've done it. I do agree."

Meanwhile, Jolival, who had not shed so many tears since he could remember, was sniffing and fumbling in his pockets from which he extracted, first, a handkerchief, into which he blew with a noise like the last trumpet, and secondly, his watch, which he consulted uneasily. Then he glanced with an anxious expression at Marianne. But Jason, who had observed this proceeding, spared him the role of spoilsport.

"I know," he said quietly. "It is more than time and O'Flaherty must be at the beach already."

The delicate veil of Marianne's brand-new happiness was rent in an instant. Lost in her discovery, she had temporarily forgotten what loomed ahead.

"Oh, no!" she cried out. "Not so soon!"

Feverishly, as though feeling herself suddenly a prisoner, she thrust the baby at Jolival and threw back the covers as if to get up. But she had overestimated her strength and almost before her feet had touched the ground she felt her head swimming and she fell forward with a little cry into Jason's arms as he hurried around the bed to catch her.