"But Desmond didn't a little bit. You need'nt have tried to make me think she didn't. She really didn't. I only married her because she was going to have a baby. And that was because I remembered you and the rotten time you'd had. I believe that would have kept me straight with women if nothing else did.
"Of course I was an idiot about it. I didn't think of marrying you till Vera told me I ought to have waited. Then it was too late.
"That's why I want you most awfully to have a baby."
"Yes, Nicky.
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do when I know it's coming. The cottage belongs to Uncle Anthony, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, I love it. Do you think he'd let me live in it?"
"I think he'd give it to you if you asked him."
"For my very own. Like the apple-tree house. Very well, he'll give it to me--I mean to both of us--and I shall come up here where it's all quiet and you'd never know there was a war at all--even the Belgians have forgotten it. And I shall sit out here and look at that hill, because it's straight and beautiful. I won't--I simply won't think of anything that isn't straight and beautiful. And I shall get strong. Then the baby will be straight and beautiful and strong, too.
"I shall try--I shall try hard, Nicky--to make him like you."