Aaron drew a deep inaudible breath; his eyes softened as they had never done for anyone but Theodosia.

At last I have a son! He softly touched the damp auburn fuzz on the baby's head. I will raise them high above ordi nary mortals. I will make them great—through me: Theodosia and her baby.

He turned, and walking to the window gazed unseeing over the waking city's roof tops. The ways and means were not apparent yet, but one cannot hurry, though one may control destiny. Nothing was impossible to a disciplined, indomitable will. Nothing.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THEODOSIA'S strength came back more quickly than anyone had thought possible. The eighteen-year-old body, freed of its burden and attendant poisons, surged again with vitality. Her convalescence was happy. She lay quiet in the big bed, lapped in the peaceful aftermath of childbirth, the actual agony faded to a dim, scarcely remembered haze.

She delighted in her baby. The tugging of his lips at her breast gave her a physical delight keener than any she had ever known. She had indignantly refused the negro wetnurse that Mrs. Alston and Maria engaged. 'I wish to suckle him myself,' she averred, with a gentle firmness against which they could make no impression, cither by frowns or pleadings. So they gave it up. It was but one more of Theodosia's outlandish, immodest ways. They took themselves back to the beach, and left her to delicious quiet and the company of the three beings she loved: Aaron, the baby, and Joseph.

Yes, Joseph. For when he had come to her on the day after the baby's birth and held his little son in his arms, she had seen how sharply hurt and unhappy he was. His face was haggard, his clothes disarranged, his eyes bloodshot.

'Thank God, you're safe,' he muttered, and sank to his knees beside her. She pulled the baby close into the crook of her arm, where he nuzzled, settling down with a tiny sigh. The other arm she threw around Joseph's neck. And in that moment she felt close to him, of one mind, caught up together by the miracle of their parenthood.

'Isn't the baby beautiful?' she whispered. 'Father says he is the most perfectly formed infant he has ever seen.'

Joseph stiffened. 'Colonel Burr behaves as though the child were his.'

Theo started to smile, but checked it. She realized something of Joseph's resentment: that the whole process of her illness and confinement had frightened and disgusted him, and that nevertheless he had been hurt by his exclusion. He loved her, had during the last hours been wild with fear for her safety, and yet she had not wanted him, had apparently not remembered his existence.

'Father saved my life, Joseph——' she began, watching his scowl.

He made an impatient gesture, but he knew she was right. He could say nothing.