“But are you sure? I couldn’t bear to think that I had.”
“I am very sure of that, Olivia.”
“You aren’t angry with me for asking?”
“We’re old friends, you and I, Olivia. Old friends like you and I don’t get angry with each other.”
“Some day I hope you’ll marry, Charles. You’d make the right woman very happy.”
“Ah no, no. We mustn’t talk of that.”
“You will, Charles. You will. And yet it would be sad to see all one’s boy and girl friends married. A woman doesn’t like to feel old.”
“Olivia.”
“Now come in and see Tom. Do you think there are good doctors here?” The question was earnestly asked. It seemed to Margaret that it took for granted that he knew, that it was the woman’s way of taking him into her confidence, into the dark, locked cupboard, meagrely catalogued without, which is a woman’s confidence. It made a strange jangling of all his strings to hear her. In the dark passage there, with her great eyes looking into his, and the earrings gleaming palely against the hair, she moved him, she shook him out of tune.
“Olivia,” he said, stammering. “Olivia. If. When. When your. If you ever have a child, Olivia. Will you let me—let me—— Let me see it often. Be its godfather. Be something to it?”