STEVE, meaning well, though he had better have held his tongue, 'I don't count; I am such an old friend.' ALICE, slowly, 'Such an old friend!' Her husband sees that she is struggling with some emotion. COLONEL. 'Worrying about the children still, Alice?' ALICE, glad to break down openly, 'Yes, yes, I can't help it, Robert.' COLONEL, petting her, 'There, there, you foolish woman. Joy will come in the morning; I never was surer of anything. Would you like me to take you home now?' ALICE. 'Home. But, yes, I--let us go home.' COLONEL. 'Can we have a cab, Steve?' STEVE. 'I'll go down and whistle one. Alice, I'm awfully sorry that you--that I--' ALICE. 'Please, a cab.' But though she is alone with her husband now she does not know what she wants to say to him. She has a passionate desire that he should not learn who is behind that door. COLONEL, pulling her toward him, 'I think it is about Amy that you worry most.' ALICE. 'Why should I, Robert?' COLONEL. 'Not a jot of reason.' ALICE. 'Say again, Robert, that everything is sure to come right just as we planned it would.' COLONEL. 'Of course it will.' ALICE. 'Robert, there is something I want to tell you. You know how dear my children are to me, but Amy is the dearest of all. She is dearer to me, Robert, than you yourself.' COLONEL. 'Very well, memsahib.' ALICE. 'Robert dear, Amy has come to a time in her life when she is neither quite a girl nor quite a woman. There are dark places before us at that age through which we have to pick our way without much help. I can conceive dead mothers haunting those places to watch how their child is to fare in them. Very frightened ghosts, Robert. I have