“After Gwen went away,” she continued softly, with bent head, as they paced slowly up the drive, “my heart seemed to fill with restless growth, new thoughts and feelings were for ever astir in me, I could not rest; old feelings that should have had their budding and birth long ago only then awoke, and beset me with sweet pain.”
She stopped and leaned up against him. “I have never been able to tell you all this before, except indirectly. Ah, Henry, such strange new thoughts torture and soothe me, they war with one another continually and there is not one drop of sweetness that has not two drops of bitterness to temper it withal.
“Let’s walk on, dearest, you are cold.—I have such strange yearnings, Henry, for baby touches and baby kisses, I, who have never felt them for my own, have to seek them among babies not of my flesh and blood. I have to find the pale ghosts of them amongst my lost children’s little clothes.”
“My love, not lost.”
“Yes, Henry, lost, more than if the grave had closed over them; those forfeited things do not return. I have a mother’s heart now when I no longer need it,” she said, with a wan smile, “and I know—ah, I know so many things, such pitiful things. The other day a tiny baby grasped at my breast and tried to nestle his head there—to suck my breast, Henry—it was worse than death, for I knew I had lost the best sweetness of life.”
“My love, my love, those things are not lost,” cried her husband, and then with sudden and surprising astuteness, he added, “there will be Gwen’s children.”
She clutched his hand in a sudden tremor of excitement.
“Ah, and then—then, too, Gwen might understand—now—” she coughed softly and broke off.
“But, Henry, I have you, we will go together as we used to do; perhaps work, regular work, may make me feel better.”
“My love,” he cried eagerly, “I am certain it is just the thing you want, the very thing.”