"You—talking this way!" mocked Ursula.
"Meaning, I suppose, my late infatuation?" inquired he, unruffled.
"I never saw or read of a worse case."
"Am I ruined?"
"No. But why not? Because you got her. If you hadn't—" Ursula blew out a large cloud of cigarette smoke with a "Pouf!"
"If I hadn't got her," said Norman, "I'd have got well, just the same, in due time. A sick weak man goes down; a sick strong man gets well. When a man who's reputed to be strong doesn't get well, it's because he merely seemed strong but wasn't. The poets and novelists and the historians and the rest of the nature fakers fail to tell all the facts, dear sister. All the facts would spoil a pretty story."
Ursula thought a few minutes, suddenly burst out with, "Do you think Dorothy loves you now?"
Norman rose to go out doors. "I don't think about such unprofitable things," said he. "As long as we suit each other and get along pleasantly—why bother about a name for it?"
In the French window he paused, stood looking out with an expression so peculiar that Ursula, curious, came to see the cause. A few yards away, under a big symmetrical maple in full leaf sat Dorothy with the baby on her lap. She was dressed very simply in white. There was a little sunlight upon her hair, a sheen of gold over her skin. She was looking down at the baby. Her expression——
Said Ursula: "Several of the great painters have tried to catch that expression. But they've failed."