Through their long arguments, Thyrsis had gradually come to realize that the decision rested with him. Corydon was in his hands; she had become a burden upon him, and she would rather she were dead; and so he had to take the responsibility and issue the command. So through many an hour while Corydon slept he had marshalled the facts and tested them, hungering with all his soul for knowledge of the right.
To bring a child into the world would shatter every plan they had formed. And yet, again and again, he forced himself to face the idea. They had always meant to have children ultimately; and now the gift was offered—and suppose they rejected it, and it should never be offered again! However unpropitious the hour might be, still the hour was here—the task was already one-third done. And if there were cares and responsibilities, expenses and pains of child-birth—at least they would be for a child; whereas, in the other case, there were also cares and responsibilities, expenses and pains—and for naught!
Throughout all this long pilgrimage of love, Thyrsis had been struck by the part which blind chance had played. It was blind chance that had brought Corydon to the country where he had gone. It was blind chance that he had read his book to her. And then—the chance that he had gone to see a doctor about diet! And that dark accident in the night, that had opened the gates of life to a new human soul! And now, strangest of all—the chance by which this last issue was to be decided! By a walk in the park, and a casual meeting with a nurse-maid!
“God knows I want to do what is right!” Thyrsis had said. “But I just don’t know what to say!”—And then they sat down upon a bench, and the nurse-maid came and sat beside them.
It was five or ten minutes before Thyrsis noted what was going on. He was lost in his sombre brooding, his eyes fixed upon vacancy; when suddenly he heard Corydon exclaim: “Isn’t he a little love!” He turned to look.
The nurse-maid was in charge of a carriage, and in the carriage was a baby; and the baby was smiling at Corydon, and Corydon was smiling back. She was poking her finger at it, and it was catching at the finger with its chubby paws. “Isn’t he a little love!” Corydon repeated.
Thyrsis stared at her. But then, quickly, he hid his thought. He even pretended to be interested.
“Isn’t he pretty?” she asked him.
Now as a matter of fact he seemed to Thyrsis to be quite conspicuously ugly. He had red hair, and a flat nose, and was altogether lacking in aristocratic attributes. But Thyrsis answered promptly, “Yes, dear,” and continued to watch.
And Corydon continued to play. Apparently she knew something about babies—how to amuse them and how to handle them, and had even heard rumors about how to feed them. She was asking questions of the nurse-maid, and displaying interest—Thyrsis would have been no more amazed had he found her in converse with a Chaldean astrologer. For a full quarter of an hour she had managed to forget her agonies of spirit, and to play with a baby!