“I really don’t think that would be quite nice— I mean especially now, because I fancy I’m going to have a baby.”
He made a sound of surprise.
“Oh, I’m not going to do the weeping mother. And I don’t know whether I’m glad or furious, though I do believe I’d like to have one baby. But it does complicate things, you know. And personally, I should be sorry if you left the Institute, which gives you a solid position, for a hole-and-corner existence. Dear, I have been fairly nice, haven’t I? I really do like you, you know! I don’t want you to desert me, and you would if you went off to this horrid Vermont place.”
“Couldn’t we get a little house near there, and spend part of the year?”
“Pos-sibly. But we ought to wait till this beastly job of bearing a Dear Little One is over, then think about it.”
Martin did not resign from the Institute, and Joyce did not think about taking a house near Birdies’ Rest to the extent of doing it.
CHAPTER XXXIX
I
With Terry Wickett gone, Martin returned to phage. He made a false start and did the worst work of his life. He had lost his fierce serenity. He was too conscious of the ordeal of a professional social life, and he could never understand that esoteric phenomenon, the dinner-party—the painful entertainment of people whom one neither likes nor finds interesting.
So long as he had had a refuge in talking to Terry, he had not been too irritated by well-dressed nonentities, and for a time he had enjoyed the dramatic game of making Nice People accept him. Now he was disturbed by reason.