It had been raining all day, but now a wild red sunset flooded the townwith uncanny light, so that the dripping black buildings stood glorifiedand the hurrying crowds turned their heads, half-consciously, in uneasywonder at the magnificent west.Mary Ellis stood by the kitchen table in the basement window, and thelight, reflected from the wet pavement, shone round her with a mildradiance very different from the disturbing crimson of the angry sky. Itlit her grey hair to a halo, and made her intent, secret-smiling facethat of a saint at her devotions. She was icing a cake. And as she pipedthe pink sugar in careful preordained scrolls on the white plateau, hermind was filled with a radiance which no sunset could produce. By thecake lay a cardboard box containing twenty-four little candles. She hadhad to buy twenty-four because they were sold by the box. But the littleMarsden girl could have the other three. There was no use in keepingthem, because never again would she put candles on a cake. Not until shehad a grandchild, and that might be never. She hoped Gareth wouldn'tthink it babyish of her to do it this once. Babyish people often had aneager nose for babyishness in others. She hadn't made a birthday cake formany years now. The habit had been dropped during the war, when there wasnothing to make a cake with. And somehow, afterwards, people were lessovertly sentimental. Symbols counted less. The children had had treats ontheir birthdays, but there had been no cake with little candles. It was apractical age.She laid aside the piping-bag and looked at her work with her still,secret smile. A cake for Gareth's birthday: that's all it was. But itwas, too, the crowning of her own life, and she felt it in all her being.To-morrow her baby was twenty-one; the baby she had not wanted; the babythey had said she would never rear: and it seemed as if her wholeexistence had been but a preparation for this moment. Her five otherchildren had each in turn achieved their majority and there had beencongratulation and pleasure in each event. But to-morrow Gareth would betwenty-one, and her spirit rose up and overflowed in her at the thought.She chose from the box the more perfect of the candles (it would notmatter to the Marsden baby that her three were a little chipped), andbegan to set them in the cake, carefully because of the still-soft icing.It was strange that the baby whose coming she had resented sopassionately should be more a part of her now than he had been to thosemonths before his birth. Even his name was hers. Alfred had said that thebaby was to have a Biblical name, like the others. No child of his shouldhave other than a Biblical name. Always on previous occasions, she hadagreed for the sake of peace, but this time she had fought him, weak,determined and furious. Now that the puny brat was there she felt thatfor once it should be hers to do as she liked with. She had borne it,suffered for it, and she should mime it. It should be called Gareth.Gareth was the name of the hero in a book which she had been reading, andthe word had sung itself through her head during those awful hours. Shedid not like the name particularly, but that did not matter. All thatmattered was that it should be a name of her own choosing and that itshould have no Biblical associations.And Alfred had given in. She had been surprised at the time but toorelieved and weary to marvel long. Afterwards she had discovered that thedoctor had spoken to Alfred as one man very rarely speaks to another. Hehad, in his own phrase, put the fear of God in Alfred, and to Alfred,that intimate of God, it was a new sensation. Alfred had agreed that Maryshould choose the name.And he had, of course, changed his doctor. But as there were no morebabies that had not mattered very greatly.Because he was hers in a sense that the others had never been, thesickly, wailing baby had been taken to her heart. When they tried to warnher that he might never make old bones her lips tightened in the littlemovement with which all her children were familiar, and her chin lifted,Fools! Of course he would live. He was hers, wasn't he? The only one tobe wholly hers. She would see to it that he lived. And it seemed that herson had inherited her spirit, for he not only lived but, in spite of hismany illnesses, throve. Her hand hesitated a moment and she smiled at apassing vision of Gareth at the age of seven; a battered little figure,with thin scarred knees, red hair damp and tumbled, one eye dark where ablack eye was coming, and the other eye faintly green where a black eyewas going.