“Do you remember we said we would call him Philip--our first boy--long before we had him? When we used to talk about him, in those first happy months of being together, it didn’t seem possible that it could ever be really true, did it, dear? And yet there he is--twenty-four years old! It’s difficult for me to think that I ever could have been his mother. When I look at him, so tall and big, it seems impossible that he could once have been my baby.” He stared at her. What was she talking of? They had never had a child. Then it came to him---- “Yes, dear. He’s a fine chap.” She smiled at him gratefully. “I think we were right to let him marry, don’t you, dear? I know he’s very young--but it’s perhaps better than if he waited until he became set in his own habits and could no longer share the youthful high-spirits of his dear little wife--as you very nearly waited too long, didn’t you, dear? Another year or two of getting wrapped up in your own ambitions and you might have crushed all the young life out of me.” Her tone was dreamily sincere. “Don’t, Christine!” he said, thickly. “I know a lot of it was my fault----” “Shh!” she soothed him with a gesture of her disengaged hand. “We’re talking about Phil and his charming little wife. She’s just the sort of girl I would have chosen for him, Harry. Young, sensible, pretty, with eyes that look you straight in the face--and she loves him, Harry, like I loved you, with all her young soul.” He made a little choking sound and pressed her hand--so warm and loving now!--with a convulsive tightness. “And soon, Harry,” she went on, “we shall be grandparents, you and I--looking forward beyond the next generation to the one after--_living forward_. Life is very wonderful, isn’t it, dear, in its continuity? Our little lives cease, but something of us goes on and on, in generations that we can’t even imagine. Oh, it’s very wonderful!” She sighed. “To think we might have missed it all, if we had not loved!” “Christine!” He could scarcely speak. “You’re torturing me!” “Shh!” she said. “It’s all real--it’s all real _now_. Everything else was a bad dream from which we have waked together.” “If only we could keep awake!” he said, pressing her hand in his as though he would never let it go. She looked at him archly. “You were always pessimistic, Harry, weren’t you? Do you remember how you used to say we should never have the little girl for whom we longed, just because we longed for her so much? And now there’s Jeanie! Jeanie who’ll be having her twenty-first birthday in a month or two! And you are proud of her, aren’t you, Harry? Of course you are! We are both proud of such a daughter, just the daughter we imagined.” He closed his eyes. “I remember--I remember how we used to talk of the daughter we were going to have. It seems very long ago, Christine, those first months of our life together.” She smiled.