He laughed. "Couldn't I have it, then? Well, to tell you a secret, you couldn't either. But another secret is that, probably, neither of us would really want it."
"That's true. It's dreadful the way married people learn to cling to each other."
"Well, what else would you cling to?"
"I don't know."
"Well; won't you risk it?"
"I think, perhaps, I dare if you dare."
The biggest moment of Rokeby's life was when he took her, for the second time, into his arms, and felt her lips respond to his. She shut her eyes and saw again the vision of the three cots side by side in a dim room; and his eyes, on her face, saw the mother-ecstasy there. "You wonder!" he exclaimed.
"Why?"
"To give me such a fright when all the while you've been feeling this!"
It was a long drive from Hampstead, and all the time she was within his arms, and all the time he told her of all they would be to each other; of how he loved her. And at last she stood alone in her flat, with her bedroom lights switched on, looking at a radiant creature in the glass, and crying within herself: