"It was a good idea," he said; "an excellent way of--of killing two birds
with one stone."

Paula was smiling over this when he came back to her. "It doesn't matter,
does it?" he asked.

She shook her head. "It isn't that it's out of tune, really; it's
just--hopeless."

It was strange how like a knife thrust that word of hers--hopeless--went
through him. Perfectly illogical, of course; she was not speaking of his
life and hers but of that ridiculous drawing-room piano. Somehow the mere
glow she had brought into the room with her, the afterglow of an
experience he had no share in producing, had become painful to him; made
him feel old. He averted his eyes from her with an effort and stared down
at his empty plate.

A moment later she came around the table and seated herself, facing him,
upon the arm of his chair; clasped his neck with her two hands. "You're
tired," she said. "How much sleep did you have last night?" And on his
admitting that he hadn't had any, she exclaimed against his working
himself to death like that.

No memory, though he made a conscious effort to recover it, of his
audacious success during the small hours of that morning in bringing
triumphantly into the world the small new life that Pollard would have
destroyed, came back to fortify him; no trace of his own afterglow that
had so fascinated and alarmed his sister. "I shall sleep fast for an hour
or two this morning and make it up," he told Paula.