"Is it—the same thing that my child has?"
"Precisely the same."
"And it comes," she said, "from them. And they never told me."
"They must have thought you knew."
"I didn't. They made me think it was my fault. They let me go through all that agony and terror. I can't forgive them."
"They couldn't have known."
"There was Henry. He must have known. And yet he made me think it. He made me give up writing because of that."
"You needn't think it any more. Jacky gets his constitution from you, and it was you who saved the little one."
"He made me think I'd killed him. It's just as well," she said, "that I should have thought it. If I hadn't I mightn't have fought so hard to make him live. I might have been tormented with another book. It was the only thing that could have stopped me."
She paused. "Perhaps—they knew that."