For a long while we were silent. I could not ask her to tell me more; and she would not volunteer because only half the secret was hers. “When are you coming to stay with me?” I asked at last. “Oh, Dombeen, I should love to,” she said. “But it’s impossible. Eustace doesn’t like me to be away, ever. He counts so on my presence here.” “But he could come too,” I said. “Oh, no,” she replied. “No. He doesn’t like the house to be left. No, it can’t be done.” I had no right to press the case. But I could not refrain from saying—“Then you are never to visit me at all?” “Of course: some day,” she said. “But not yet. It couldn’t be for a long while. You see. . .” And then I learned that she was again to become a mother. How the world rushes on! A child grows to be a girl, and a girl a wife, before one can turn round. And then there is another child and the same restless urgency sets in once more. I thought of some lines I had read years and years ago that had stuck in my mind: There is so much we ne’er can know— No time, no time! We seem to only come—to go. * * * * * I went back feeling all out of tune and dissatisfied. This may be a common experience with parents after their first visit to their married daughters; but I had not even thought of it before. True, I had set out with some vague misgivings, but so often—it is almost the rule—the realization is better than our fears for it, that I had discounted the premonition. And now I knew that my girl had made a mistake. It was not so much that she was unhappy as that she had lost her old habit of happiness. She had become passive where she had been vividly active. Instead of joy she had found resignation. I don’t mean that she was broken-spirited in any way: but she was too quiet. If I were God I should be very much ashamed of having added resignation to young wives’ armouries. Rose’s second baby was a girl. Eustace sent me a telegram to that effect, and I wondered much on her feelings toward it. There had been no joy in her voice when she had told me of its coming. I went up to see them when Rose the second—for the child was named after her mother—was two weeks old, and was led into the room by Eustace. Much could be written on the different demeanour of husbands on such occasions, for some behave like impresarios and some like trespassers, some are boisterous and some are perplexed, but none, however much they want to disguise it, are totally without pride. Even those husbands who are as much embarrassed and hampered by their wives presenting them with a son or a daughter as they would be if their valets were to lose an arm, cannot wholly conceal their triumph. Eustace, although with cool reserve, belonged to the impresario class.