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arms again and death now was an antagonist that they could face together. His slow return to life and to her had recalled the trembling sweetness of her pregnancy, and when he was safe at last it was as if he had been born again. All the good things had come to her at once; Clive’s recovery and Aunt Janet’s legacy and the post in the staunch old City shipping-office to make them in their own eyes opulent. It was true that she had never thought of a shipping-office as the end of all her efforts; she had thought of Clive as a soldier, like his father, or a lawyer, like his grandfather, or the poet that his verses had seemed to promise; but the shipping-office, when it came, was indeed a harbour and what wonder, with all the sudden security, that she had been blind to the change in Clive, the change, she saw so clearly now, that had made him Hester’s prey. His child face rose before her as she tried to define to herself in what it had consisted; one day, when very tiny, he had had little friends to tea and been horribly shy and afraid of them. Fear, with Clive, never took the form of subterfuge or awkwardness. He had sat there, very upright in his white suit, at the end of the nursery table, a pale, golden little boy; and though he could not assume a smile he could muster a perfect courtesy. The