'You really think so?' she asked simply. 'What wonderful thoughts you have I One has read, of course, of wives who inspired their husbands' work; but it seemed to belong to books rather than to actual life.'
Rogers looked at her thoughtful, passionate face a moment before he answered. He realised that his words would count with her. They approached delicate ground. She had an absurd idea of his importance in their lives; she exaggerated his influence; if he said a wrong thing its effect upon her would be difficult to correct.
'Well,' he said, feeling mischief in him, 'I don't mind telling you that I should never have understood that confused idea of his story but for one thing.'
'What was that?' she asked, relieved to feel more solid ground at last.
'That I saw the thing from his own point of view,' he replied; 'because I have had similar thoughts all my life. I mean that he's bagged it all unconsciously out of my own mind; though, of course,' he hastened to add, 'I could never, never have made use of it as he will. I could never give it shape and form.'
Mother began to laugh too. He caught the twinkle in her eyes. She bounced again a little on the springy sofa as she turned towards him, confession on her lips at last.
'And I do believe you've felt it too, haven't you?' he asked quickly, before she could change her mind.
'I've felt something—yes,' she assented; 'odd, unsettled; new things rushing everywhere about us; the children mysterious and up to all sorts of games and wickedness; and bright light over everything, like- like a scene in a theatre, somehow. It's exhilarating, but I can't quite make it out. It can't be right to feel so frivolous and jumpy- about at my age, can it?'
'You feel lighter, eh?
She burst out laughing. Mother was a prosaic person; that is, she had strong common-sense; yet through her sober personality there ran like a streak of light some hint of fairy lightness, derived probably from her Celtic origin. Now, as Rogers watched her, he caught a flash of that raciness and swift mobility, that fluid, protean elasticity of temperament which belonged to the fairy kingdom. The humour and pathos in her had been smothered by too much care. She accepted old age before her time. He saw her, under other conditions, dancing, singing, full of Ariel tricks and mischief—instead of eternally mending stockings and saving centimes for peat and oil and washerwomen. He even saw her feeding fantasy—poetry—to Daddy like a baby with a spoon. The contrast made him laugh out loud.