“Listen, Arthur. I wrote to mother three weeks ago. About this. I’ve made her think that it was I who wanted the children, always, from the very first. She’ll understand that I couldn’t be happy without a baby in my arms. It is different. They’re never quite the same after the first year. Even Arty wasn’t. Mother will understand. She won’t be hard.”
She had provided for everything. It was her lie that proved the extremity of her fear, her foreboding.
If only she had not lied!
Somehow, in the seven years of his married life, he had never seen this calamity in front of him. His dreams had always been of a time when their children should be out in the world, when he saw himself walking with his wife in some quiet country place, like Queningford.
If she had not lied!
He sought for calm words wherewith to support her; but no words came. He clutched at the bedclothes. His eyes were blind with tears, his ears deafened by the sound of his own pulses.
In a moment the seven years were unveiled. He had a sudden vision of Aggie’s incorruptible love and divine tenderness before his grief closed over him.
Her eyes were resting upon his.
“I’m not afraid,” she said; “not the least little bit. I’d rather you went away to-morrow. I don’t—mind—being left.”
But when to-morrow came it was he who was left.