THE WIDENING GULF The birth of a daughter came upon Hugh in the light of an almost overwhelming shock.

He was quite silent when, in response to Catherine's imperative gesture, he surrendered the child into her arms once more.
As she took it from him he noticed that those thin, angular arms of hers seemed to close round the little swaddled body in an almost jealously possessive clasp.

But there was none of the tender possessiveness of love about it.

In some oddly repugnant way it reminded him of the motion of a bird of prey at last gripping triumphantly in its talons a victim that has hitherto eluded pursuit.
He turned back dully to his contemplation of the wintry garden, nor, in his absorption, did he hear the whimpering cry--almost of protest--that issued from the lips of his first-born as Catherine bore the child away.
For a space it seemed as though his mind were a blank, every thought and feeling wiped out of it by the stupendous, nullifying fact that his wife had given birth to a daughter.

Then, with a rush as torturing as the return of blood to benumbed limbs, emotions crowded in upon him.
Catherine's incessant denunciations of his "sin" in marrying Diane Wielitzska--poured upon him without stint throughout this first year of his marriage--seemed to din in his ears anew.