How sustain the light madnesses of College? except in drink and gambling. How nourish the child in him he was? save with the rolling bloods of liquor, the swift tossings, cradlings, plungings of luck at cards. At the end of deep immersement in a helpless joy forever Birth which was an end: the Birth here at last Disgrace, as the Birth once air. Too much money lost, too much folly of a night in his cups. A woman half dead, half naked, bent across a table, a mirror smashed, ten thousand dollars debt. A birth that! Harry slipped down into it as doubtless he had slipped from his mother’s womb ... whimpering, blinking, inarticulate—nostalgic. He was gone.
But his father had Honor to groom. The debt was paid, the woman was salvaged and sent off. No word in the papers.
“He will find out he’s safe ... turn up, sobered ... my Dear. Never worry,” his father assured her.
“And I ...?”
“You are his wife, Frances. You must wait.”
She got up.
“Will you move my chair, Colonel Luve ... over there?”
She walked, clear slender neck and legs with her child so full before her her walk seemed to say: “My child comes first.”
Her husband’s parent shook his head.