"How sweet it is to be a woman!" she thought, forgetting all past pain and despair, all anguish to come. "My heart can never be a stone again, nor my soul a shrivelled leaf."
She drowsed happily through the days that followed, letting her mind rest with her body; she thought of nothing but the sweetness of being a mother; she was intoxicated by the cling of the little lips to her breast.
"I am a real woman," she said. "This is what I was born for and made beautiful for. Poor, poor old Sara!"
When Nurse Selton came one day and asked if she would like to get her child "adopted," she would have struck the woman's face if it had been within reach. As it was not, she said in a voice that was a drawn sword:
"Go away! I hate you!" And Nurse Selton actually understood and went away. She considered Poppy—taking one thing with another—the craziest patient she had ever had.
Poppy talked to her baby afterwards. "I said I would be at peace with the world for evermore dear one; but here I am, my old self already. And I see that it will always be so. I must be at war for your sake now. I must fight your enemies—until you are old enough to fight them for yourself. To dare suggest such a thing!" A little while after she whispered passionately to the sleek, black head:
"She did not know she was speaking of a king's son!"
CHAPTER XVII
WHEN the time came for departure from No. 10, Old Street, Poppy did not go from Westminster. The grip of the place was on her and she did not care to leave it. But she sought and found a part of more cheerful aspect—a quiet square with a triangle of green in its centre, and the spire of an old church showing above the branches of trees in one of its corners. The house where she engaged two rooms had an old-fashioned air, though upon the opening of the front door was disclosed the depressing interior common to most houses of its kind—the worn linoleum in the hall and stairway; the inevitable pretentious hall-chair and umbrella-stand; the eternal smell of fish and boiling linen. But the two rooms were an artistic find. They had been inhabited and furnished by an actress, who was married to an artist, and were original without being uncomfortable.