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The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield
page 24 of 225 (10%)
quivering, distraught look was like the look of a trapped beast.

But the trouble was--here Linda felt almost inclined to laugh, though
Heaven knows it was no laughing matter--she saw her Stanley so seldom.
There were glimpses, moments, breathing spaces of calm, but all the rest of
the time it was like living in a house that couldn't be cured of the habit
of catching on fire, on a ship that got wrecked every day. And it was
always Stanley who was in the thick of the danger. Her whole time was
spent in rescuing him, and restoring him, and calming him down, and
listening to his story. And what was left of her time was spent in the
dread of having children.

Linda frowned; she sat up quickly in her steamer chair and clasped her
ankles. Yes, that was her real grudge against life; that was what she
could not understand. That was the question she asked and asked, and
listened in vain for the answer. It was all very well to say it was the
common lot of women to bear children. It wasn't true. She, for one, could
prove that wrong. She was broken, made weak, her courage was gone, through
child-bearing. And what made it doubly hard to bear was, she did not love
her children. It was useless pretending. Even if she had had the strength
she never would have nursed and played with the little girls. No, it was
as though a cold breath had chilled her through and through on each of
those awful journeys; she had no warmth left to give them. As to the boy--
well, thank Heaven, mother had taken him; he was mother's, or Beryl's, or
anybody's who wanted him. She had hardly held him in her arms. She was so
indifferent about him that as he lay there...Linda glanced down.

The boy had turned over. He lay facing her, and he was no longer asleep.
His dark-blue, baby eyes were open; he looked as though he was peeping at
his mother. And suddenly his face dimpled; it broke into a wide, toothless
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