"What is it then?" Hannah continued less tremulously--"What is it if you're not in love? Was he a brute? Did he make love to you?"
With all the knowledge she had gained, Mary now found herself amazed at this simplicity of mind which once quite well she knew had been her own. For an instant it gave her courage. For an instant it set up this new antagonism she had found against the laws that kept her sex in the bondage of servitude to the needs of man. So in that instant and with that courage, she spoke it out, abruptly, sharply as she had known she must. The swift, the sudden blow, it made the cleanest wound.
"I'm going to have a child, Hannah," she said, and in a moment that garden seemed full of a surging joy to her that now they knew; and in a moment that garden seemed to Hannah a place all horrible with evil growing things that twined about her heart and brought their heavy, nauseating perfume, pungent and overbearing to her nostrils.
She dropped Mary's arm that held her own. With lips already trembling to the inevitable tears, she stood still on the path between those rows of double pinks, now bearing up an evil, heavy scent to her, as she stared before her.
It could not be true! How could it be true? She fought with that, the refusal to believe its truth.
"He was only here a fortnight," she muttered oddly. "You didn't know him. You'd never met him before. You only played golf with him, or you walked on the cliffs. You didn't know him. How can you expect me to believe it happened--in a fortnight? Mother was engaged to father for two years. I--I wasn't born till fourteen months after they'd been married!"
She laughed--a thin crackle of laughter.
"You're a fool, Mary. You don't know what you're talking about. He was only here a fortnight."
"It's quite true, Hannah," said Mary quietly. "I'm going to have a child."
Her heart was beating evenly now. They knew. Pride was returning with warming blood through her veins. Less and less she felt the chill of fear.