“Do you think you should?” she asked, leaning forward from the back of the great chair and letting her wrists drop over the front of its broad arms.
“I do,” said the Doctor, kindly. “Why shouldn’t I? This present attack was by your own fault.” While he spoke he was looking into her eyes, contracted at their corners by her slight smile. The face was one of those that show not merely that the world is all unknown to them, but that it always will be so. It beamed with inquisitive intelligence, and yet had the innocence almost of infancy. The Doctor made a discovery; that it was this that made her beautiful. “She is beautiful,” he insisted to himself when his critical faculty dissented.
“You needn’t doubt me, Doctor. I’ll try my best to take care. Why, of course I will,—for John’s sake.” She looked up into his face from the tassel she was twisting around her finger, touching the floor with her slippers’ toe and faintly rocking.
“Yes, there’s a chance there,” replied the grave man, seemingly not overmuch pleased; “I dare say everything you do or leave undone is for his sake.”
The little wife betrayed for a moment a pained perplexity, and then exclaimed:—
“Well, of course!” and waited his answer with bright eyes.
“I have known women to think of their own sakes,” was the response.
She laughed, and with unprecedented sparkle replied:—
“Why, whatever’s his sake is my sake. I don’t see the difference. Yes, I see, of course, how there might be a difference; but I don’t see how a woman”— She ceased, still smiling, and, dropping her eyes to her hands, slowly stroked one wrist and palm with the tassel of her husband’s robe.
The Doctor rose, turned his back to the mantel-piece, and looked down upon her. He thought of the great, wide world: its thorny ways, its deserts, its bitter waters, its unrighteousness, its self-seeking greeds, its weaknesses, its under and over reaching, its unfaithfulness; and then again of this—child, thrust all at once a thousand miles into it, with never—so far as he could see—an implement, a weapon, a sense of danger, or a refuge; well pleased with herself, as it seemed, lifted up into the bliss of self-obliterating wifehood, and resting in her husband with such an assurance of safety and happiness as a saint might pray for grace to show to Heaven itself. He stood silent, feeling too grim to speak, and presently Mrs. Richling looked up with a sudden liveliness of eye and a smile that was half apology and half persistence.