"I love you so much that I'd sooner have an air-raid to-night and a bomb on my head here, now, than lose you! You're the whole world to me!"
She shook her head miserably and without hope of flattering reassurance.
"I could have killed myself when you told me that I'd destroyed your power of work," she whispered. "And to-night, when that girl said that Jack might never be able to work again … It's what I should feel, if we married and I couldn't bear children! I should be incomplete, useless!"
"But you're not responsible."
"I might make things easier.…"
So compassion was coming to reinforce or supplant vanity.… Eric felt that he knew Barbara's moods in advance. Lady Knightrider—a curse on her name—had started by setting every nerve on edge; the sight of Agnes Waring—with Jack's eyes, hair and voice—had completed her discomfiture; and Barbara had been morbidly drawing one unhappy picture after another. Jack was incapacitated; and, with his pride, he would never win through pity what he had failed to win on merit. Incapacitated or not, Jack was a pauper; and, with his fantastic honour, he would regard himself as an outcast from Barbara's society.
"Even if he can't go back to the bar," said Eric at length, "his father will have no difficulty in getting him a job. Lord Waring could take him on as his agent."
"Oh, I never thought he'd starve! But it must be such a disappointment."
"Well, the war's been such a mix-up that seven men out of ten will change their careers, when they come back.… Babs … do you care for Jack as much as that?"
She looked up quickly with a gleam of hope in her eyes.