“Umn.” Then, with the careful artlessness of childhood—“Well—shall we play a game now?” “What shall we play?” “Well—_you_ be Miss Beamish and _I’ll_ be Uncle Justin.” And when Laura had been realistically pelted with hay, Timothy, still devising deviltry, would be suddenly fatigued and would drop himself, like a toy he was tired of carrying, solidly into Laura’s lap, and fall asleep there and then, his knobby little grass-stained knees pressed against her, his hands, at the least movement, tightening on her arm. And while he slept and long after he was awake again and had run into his dinner, she could feel those small hands clutching, not her arm, but her very heart, and wonder that in the touch there could be such pleasure and such pain. Children—the very word was music.... What must it be like to have children of one’s own—one’s own?... But that was one of the things, she supposed, that she would have to do without—just have to do without—unless ... unless.... And then the wild thoughts that breed in a mind grown conscious of its needs, its spiritual and bodily needs, would rise in battle against her. If Justin didn’t want her?... She was young.... It was a big world ... must she starve?... And then she would shiver away again from such rescue, perceiving that Justin, living or dead, was like a sword between her and any other man; that isolation, right and natural and torturing as her needs were for love and children and the warmth of a common hearth, was the price she must pay for all that he had taught her—he, who knew so little of what he taught. And perceived also that if she were not to be happy—as she reckoned happiness—it was not his fault, but the fault of her own nature. She had railed so often at his un-imagination—but how much greater was her own, that could conceive no happiness apart from him? Yet knowing at last her own nature, could she wish it changed? If she were offered Lethe, would she drink? She believed not. And then she would be filled with a fierce disgust at herself that she could be thus occupied with her personal affairs, with the infinitely unimportant pains and perplexities of her own toy tragedy, when, if she stood quiet and the day were still, she could hear, so far away that it was less sound than a tremor of the air, the mutter of the Flanders guns. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXXV