"My darling, have you enjoyed it? Have you enjoyed it just as much as you can enjoy anything?" said Dodo, feeling the shades of the prison-house closing round. "I have."
"To-morrow at this time," said David solemnly, "you'll be here and I shan't."
Dodo heard her heart-cords thrumming; joy was the loudest because the child she had brought into the world, flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone was a boy already, and with the flicking round of the swift years would soon be a man, and for the same reason there was regret and aching there because never again would she see one who was part of herself, her life, swelling into bud, and thereafter blossoming....
"Oh, David," she said, "your darling body will be there, and I shall be here, but that's nothing at all. There's love between us, isn't there, and what on earth can part that? You'll understand that some day. Hasn't to-day been delicious? Well, it was only delicious because you were you and I was I. Just think of that for a second! You wouldn't have cared about catching boots with Albert Hun."
He opened his eyes very wide.
"Why, I should have hated it!" he said. "It was the boot and you, Mummie, that made it lovely. Is that it?"
"It's it and all of it," said she. "Off you go. I shall come to say good-night before dinner."
David wrinkled up his nose.
"Dinner after treacle-pudding and bananas!" he shouted. "Who'll be fat?"
"I shall have to make a pretence to keep Mrs. Arbuthnot from feeling awkward," said Dodo.