Quick to forgive, Merle came and put her arm across Anne's shoulder and Anne succeeded in not shuddering. "You're just like a little silver fairy, Anne. And I bet you spoil Rogie like the devil."
"But you forget this stern parent," Roger laughed from the doorway. "I'll discipline him; he's going to be the finest young revolutionist you ever saw."
Merle grinned: "Aren't you and Tom and Katya going to get the poor old world straightened out before that?"
"You're a scoffer." Roger came to Anne and kissed her, but she wanted to take little Rogie and run far from every one; far from those terrible, bulging eyes; those blind, embryonic eyes, resentful, unseeing, so eternally wise.
She served the dinner, but ate little, and was grateful when Merle went. Until she had gone Anne did not feel that she could go near Rogie. But the moment after she had left, Anne went softly into the bedroom. Kneeling by the baby's crib, she looked so long that he seemed to feel it and frowned and moved in his sleep. He was there, safe, alive and hers. But Anne felt all the babies in the world, the babies thwarted of life, staring at her in the warm blackness of the night.
She had wanted him and he was there, but she felt as if, somehow, he had missed a great danger. As if he had won to life by a chance.
Had Roger really wanted him?
Anne rose quickly. Again she saw the look of stupefaction in Roger's eyes. Heard his "Good Lord!"
Anne went slowly out of the room. Roger was reading under the shaded light. He was very strong, very sure of himself, sure that he was right. She stood looking at him speculatively. For the first time since her marriage Anne thought of Roger as the man she had married.
Feeling her eyes on him, Roger glanced up.