"It's not so bad, is it, Winnie?" she asked gently. "You know—I suppose it's silly to tell such things—but last night I dreamed we were going to have a baby."
"Good Lord, Jimmie!" he drawled. "I hope not. You know as well as I do that we aren't the kind of people who have kids. If you think there's any danger of it, there's a doctor I know in New York who'll put a good stop to it."
Germaine's hand fluttered helplessly at her breast and her face went white and peaked. A sharp whiff of the acrid sense of human anger and fear came from her body. I rose and eyed Winnie steadily. I was careful not to growl.
"Why, I thought—" she began. "The other night, I mean, it was all so—What's the matter? What has changed?"
He gave a sort of neighing laugh. "Oh nuts, Jimmie! We aren't the type. Say it's spring or what-have-you? Just for that are you going to go through hell just to have a little animal that will go 'Aah-Aah-Aah' at you?"
Germaine stood up. "Yes," she said. "I am. If that's the way these things happen, that's what I want. If it doesn't happen I never want to see you again so long as I live. But if it does, it will be my business, not yours. I want this baby. You loved me the other night. You needed me. We needed each other. I can't throw that away, like a—like a dead cigar butt."
He thrust his cigar into the corner of his mouth, a la Churchill. "So that's the way it is, is it?" he demanded. "Okay, but how am I expected to know that it wasn't Jerry Rutherford—"
"Oh!" Germaine looked at him in utter, white-lipped silence. "You know that can't be true."
After a minute she spoke to him quite gently.
"Winnie," she told him, "you know, I think you really ought to go to the Sanctuary, as you planned. You do need a rest, dear, and it would be better if you took it there where they have trained attendants and good doctors. I'll be waiting here till you come back. Do go, darling. It will do you a world of good. Everything will work out for us all right now."