He had turned himself about as she spoke, and now instead of sitting he knelt by her side, she leaning on her elbow toward him. In the humility of the simple words, there was something exquisite to him, they flooded his heart with a tender protectiveness.
“Oh, my darling, you say that to me! Indeed, indeed, I never reproached you.”
Dora was still grave.
“I know that,” she said, “but I reproached myself. How could I help it? But, Claude, the sting has gone out of my self-reproach. I can’t help it: it has. You have to tell me, if you truly can, that I needn’t barb it again.”
He saw she wanted the direct answer.
“You need not,” he said. “And I think you cannot. You can’t make an old bruise ache again when it is well.”
“Then it has gone,” she said. “Pull me up, dear, with those strong hands.”
He raised her to her feet, and she clung to him a moment.
“Oh, Claude! it is getting near the best time of all,” she said. “Your mother once told me that to bear a child was the best thing God ever thought of for women. Oh dear! and she was so funny at tea. Dad said something about a foreman he had discharged with nine children and another coming, and she pulled him up. How beautifully laughter and the biggest things in the world go together. They don’t interfere with one another in the least.”
“Lord! and to think that once I used to believe you weren’t respectful enough to Dad and her,” said he.