Alice was pugnacious. "What's the matter with you?" she joked brusquely. "Winnie hasn't had twins, has she?"
"Winnie's all right," Laurence said.
"How do you regard the prospect of becoming a proud father a third time, Laurence?" she demanded suddenly. She knew she was offensive but felt she must wrench something from this huge mass of bitterly desponding flesh.
The world was muted with fleshiness and heaviness. Only in her own body pain rang clear and sharp and chiming sweet. Her pain was her beauty that she kept inside herself. It was her virginity. She felt that he had no beauty of pain.
"You are the only thing that reconciles me to it, Alice," he retorted sourly.
"A benighted old spinster, eh?"
"Well, I have a pretty wife and shall soon have three lovely children. My state has its compensatory illusions."
"Ah, yes, I suppose it has." She did not know what more to say to him. He walked into the living-room, ignoring her.
It was a moment before she could make herself follow him.
If Winnie died——How did these things happen? Laurence was almost like a murderer.