His precision of mind and resolve would have enabled him to go to his grave without having looked on her face again--but he was conscious that she was an integral part of his daily thought and planning and that he longed inexpressibly to see her.

He sometimes told himself that she and the child had become a sort of obsession with him.

He believed that this was because Alixe had shown the same soft obedience to fate, and the same look in her sorrowful young eyes.

Alixe had been then as she was now--but he had not been able to save her.

She had died and he was one of the few abnormal male creatures who know utter loneliness to the end of life because of utter loss.