I realized that always at the back of my mind had been the speculation of how Eva would take the contingency which had at last arisen. I suppose I had felt that she was not the kind of woman who stands up under buffets; and in spite of her brave laughter I felt sorry for her. Her head drooped, at the moment, as if it had been beaten down by storms. She was looking out at the trees in the back garden. These wretched backyard trees of New York are called the Tree of Heaven--because they grow on nothing but hope, possibly. The leaves had started falling, and the almost bare branches were drawn in ink strokes against the darkening sky in which the first timid stars were coming out. Eva’s small head, bent and graceful, was sublimated and became part of the loveliness of twilight. There was about her still figure a suspension of all emotion. Life had stopped for a time while she looked within. I wondered what she saw; and asked what was the matter, and winced in anticipation of what she might say. I wondered if Nicholas, when she had told him, had felt as if he did not dare move, that any slight motion might precipitate the crash of his ideal. What she said was: “I’ve always wanted a child.” I saw that for the time she believed it. She was dramatizing herself. Her voice broke into a sort of rippling joy, like the note of a bird, deep in the throat but liquid. “I’m so glad! So glad! I have such a wonderful feeling of joy, of happiness, of--contentment: as if I had found out something.” “Did you say this to Nicholas?” I asked impertinently. “Certainly,” she assured me, her eyes opening wider. “How would you have had me do it? I was bound to tell him how enchanting it was for me to have a child. He took a long breath, as if it went through his body and buoyed him up to the skies. He was quite perfect about it. He couldn’t speak. He was afraid to touch me, as if I were a phantom of some delight that had always faded from his grasp. I suspect he’d had an ideal of me, all along, that would have satisfied me if I’d been nice enough to find it out. This great breath that he drew--exalting him to God, Dinah!--was so nearly a deep sigh that it startled me. There’s a lot to Nick. But I wanted him to say it; I wanted to see what words he would use.” I said: “He might have felt--you describe him as being very moved--well, then, he might have felt that words can do nothing, when a man’s soul is touched.” She smiled with pleasure. “Yes, I think that was the way he felt about it. And besides, the poor darling was never good at saying things. He has no command over words.”