“The point...?”
“Your work and mine—a man’s and a woman’s.”
“Yes, tell me, dear.”
“Why, Harry, I do think of it sometimes. We’ve planned it and arranged it and settled it so nicely, these years, and you see the big thing in marriage comes along and shatters it to bits. Your work goes on precisely as if nothing at all were happening; mine has to stand by.”
“Ah, but this,” Harry said, and in his turn indicated her condition. “This—this is different. We agreed, before Huggo, that if we had children it need make no difference to you, to your work, in a way. And it hasn’t, and needn’t now—when it’s over. But this time, this period, why, that’s bound to interfere.”
“But it doesn’t interfere with you. It shows the difference.”
“Oh, it shows the difference,” he assented.
His tone was conspicuously careless, conceding the difference but attaching to it no importance at all; and with it he rose—she had instantly the impression of him as it were brushing the difference like a crumb from his lap—and announced, “I’m going to my study now for a couple of hours before dinner. I must. Our solicitor’s coming in.” He bent over her and kissed her lovingly. “You understand, I know.”
And he went.
Yes, it showed the difference! And was not seen by him! Yes, injurious. Yes, could conceive a grudge....