“Dick,” she said abruptly, “I am going to have a baby.”
He turned, and into his face came an expression of pleasure the like of which she had not seen there before. He smiled and, moving toward her, took her gently into his arms.
“That’s fine,” he said softly. “That’s wonderful.” And she felt him kiss her gently after a fashion that was new and disarming. It was neither a casual kiss, nor a passionate one; those two moods she knew very well. This was something new. She felt almost that she were an animal, a pet for whom he had a great affection and a strong desire to protect.
“Your mother will be pleased,” she said, frightened again by the old dread of losing herself. (She was ashamed too that he should feel her tremble so.)
“She will be delighted. She wants an heir. She thinks I’m not much good at taking care of all her money.” And he kissed her again in the same tender fashion.
“But it might be a girl.”
He laughed a little. “No, I’m lucky.... Think of my eleven thousand francs!”
But she saw that he wanted a boy, desperately, that he was not in the least interested in a girl. It was very foreign of him ... that desire for some one to carry on the name, to inherit all the fortune.
After they had gone up the stairs with the rail of red plush, he came into the sitting room again to kiss her gently and to ask if she were feeling well, and when he had gone Sabine, as she lay in the darkness among the gaudy pillows of the chaise longue, understood clearly and bitterly for the first time the change which their marriage had brought about. He was being gentle and loving not because she was a woman or because he loved her, but because she had become now by the course of nature an institution, a wife, a prospective mother. He was being tender not toward her but toward an idea. He placed her a little apart, so that the old sense of companionship was no longer possible. She was a symbol now ... the wife and mother who was the rock and foundation, the one who produced sons to carry on name and property, but not by any chance the one who was loved because she was a woman.