“Rosalie, do you feel quite all right about the children?”
Yes, she could see where this was set to lead. He could leave her with the children; but she—men that married for a home—could not leave him with the children.
She said gently, “Dear, there’ll not be the least difficulty. Everything’s perfectly arranged. Everything will perfectly well go on.”
He had not moved his pose and did not move it. His voice presented in tone the profound meditation that his pose presented. He said, “I don’t quite mean that. I mean, do you always feel everything’s quite all right with them?”
How setting now? She answered, “Dear, of course I do.”
His eyes remained upon the fire. “Rosalie, d’you know I sometimes don’t.”
Her motion—a lifting of her face, a questing of her brows—was of a helmsman’s gesture, suspicious to catch before it set a shifting of the breeze. “Harry, in what way? They’re splendid.”
“You feel that?”
“Dear, you know they are.”
He put his pipe to his mouth and with that meditative tapping tapped his teeth. “Splendid, yes, in health, in appearance, in development, in all that kind of thing. I don’t mean that.” He turned his face towards her and spoke directly. “Rosalie, have you ever thought they’re not quite like other children?”