returned to the children's room because she had been suddenly overtaken
with a hunger to kiss Hugh's oldest boy, now a lad of nine. She crept
into the room and stood for a long time looking at the two boys, who
unaware of her presence had gone to sleep. Then she stole forward and
kissed the boy lightly. When she went out of the room Hugh stood in the
darkness waiting for her. He took hold of her hand and led her down the
stairs to his own room.

She was terribly afraid and her fright in an odd way pleased him.
"Well," he whispered, "you can't understand now what's going to happen
here but some day you will. I'm going to kiss you and then I'm going to
ask you to go out of this house and never come back."

He held the girl against his body and kissed her upon the cheeks and
lips. When he led her to the door she was so weak with fright and with
new, strange, trembling desires that she could with difficulty make her
way down the stair and into his wife's presence. "She will lie now," he
thought, and heard her voice coming up the stairs like an echo to his
thoughts. "I have a terrible headache. I must hurry home," he heard her
voice saying. The voice was dull and heavy. It was not the voice of a
young girl.

"She is no longer like a young tree," he thought. He was glad and proud
of what he had done. When he heard the door at the back of the house
close softly his heart jumped. A strange quivering light came into his
eyes. "She will be imprisoned but I will have nothing to do with it.
She will never belong to me. My hands will never build a prison for
her," he thought with grim pleasure.