He looked at her with more than a trace of severity in his expression. "Where did you get these unnatural ideas? I don't like you to say such things even in joke. They're most unwomanly."
She felt rebuked and showed it, but persisted, "You must admit it'll interfere."
"Interfere with what?"
"With the life we've been looking forward to—with my helping you."
"Oh—yes—" he stammered. Again that exasperating ghost! What possessed her to persist in such nonsense?
"You know it would interfere—would put off our happiness for a year or two. A year or two! Oh, Dick!"
When she had the child, thought he, the ghost would be laid forever. "Well—we'll do the best we can," he said. His tone and manner of regret were as sincere as ever mother used in assuring her child of the reality of Santa Claus. And Courtney believed and was reconciled.
"I do want the baby," she now admitted. "But I want you—love—more, oh, so much more. I'm glad your life work is something I naturally care about. Still, I suppose, when a woman loves a man, she cares about whatever he is and does, and fits herself to be part of it."
He smiled with patronizing tenderness, as he often did, always evidently quite sure she'd not understand. If we could but realize it, how our mismeasurements of others would enable us to study as in a mirror our own limitations! "Wait till you have the baby," said he.
"Do you think that with me love for a baby could ever take the place of need for love—grown-up love? You're always making me feel as if you didn't know me at all, Dick."