"Why shouldn't I?"
"But you hated the domestic life; you were always up in arms at the thought of marriage; you loathed even hearing of a wedding. You used to talk of slavery ... don't you remember?"
"Ah, but—that was before I married."
"Then, what do you think now?"
"It's the only life," Julia stated with final conviction. "It's meant for us all; we were made for it; and we're never truly happy otherwise. Desmond and I have talked over all these things, and I understand a lot which I didn't understand before."
Marie stroked the baby's curly head without replying; she held its feet in her hand, and caressed them, and patted its small fat legs, and coaxed a gurgle from it. But even while the baby ravished her heart, the heart was busy with the bride before her and the bridal raptures which she had known, only to lose upon the wayside where so many bridal raptures lie dead and dying; outworn and weary. Tears to which she had long been a stranger rose in her eyes, and formed one of those big hurtful lumps in her throat, so that she would not trust her voice to Julia's ears.
That dreadful softness of longing—she had thought she would never know it again, never more be covered with it like a shore beneath the inward flow of the sea.
"Desmond wants to meet Osborn," said Julia. "He rang him up on Saturday morning, but he was engaged. Won't you and your husband come to dinner with me and my husband one evening at Onslow Gardens?"
Julia uttered the words "my husband" with a pleasure which she could not secrete from the eyes of Marie. Had she not known it, too? Had she not once delighted in saying, "My husband thinks." ... "My husband says." ... "My husband does...." simply for the crass joy of hearing the sound?
Julia went on: