when his presence was unbearable to his wife. The dread went down to the
roots of her soul as these black days recurred. In a kind of panic she
tried to wrap herself up still further in her husband. She forced the old
spontaneous cheerfulness and joy to continue. But the effort it cost her
was almost too much. She knew she could not keep it up. She felt she
would scream with the strain, and would give anything, anything, to
escape. She longed to possess her husband utterly; it gave her inordinate
joy to have him entirely to herself. And yet, when again he was gone in a
black and massive misery, she could not bear him, she could not bear
herself; she wished she could be snatched away off the earth altogether,
anything rather than live at this cost.

Dazed, she schemed for a way out. She invited friends, she tried to give
him some further connexion with the outer world. But it was no good.
After all their joy and suffering, after their dark, great year of
blindness and solitude and unspeakable nearness, other people seemed to
them both shallow, prattling, rather impertinent. Shallow prattle seemed
presumptuous. He became impatient and irritated, she was wearied. And so
they lapsed into their solitude again. For they preferred it.

But now, in a few weeks' time, her second baby would be born. The first
had died, an infant, when her husband first went out to France. She
looked with joy and relief to the coming of the second. It would be her
salvation. But also she felt some anxiety. She was thirty years old, her
husband was a year younger. They both wanted the child very much. Yet she
could not help feeling afraid. She had her husband on her hands, a
terrible joy to her, and a terrifying burden. The child would occupy her
love and attention. And then, what of Maurice? What would he do? If only
she could feel that he, too, would be at peace and happy when the child
came! She did so want to luxuriate in a rich, physical satisfaction of