Rose drew in her breath. Her face had the soft flush in it that came when she was deeply moved. "I've got some of its dear little things all ready for it now," said Jane. "You must see them." "I should dearly love to." "I never thought, Rose, that I should have it." Rose meditated. "They come," said she, "mostly to them that doesn't think." "There's only one thing, Rose. I'm afraid. Oh, I'm so dreadfully afraid." "I shouldn't be afraid," said Rose, "if it was me." "It's because I've been so happy." "You'll be 'appier still when it's come. It'd make all the difference to me if I 'ad a child. But that's what I haven't and never shall have." "You don't know. You don't know." "Yes. I do know." Rose's mouth trembled. She glanced unaware at the pillow that lay so smooth beside her own. "I 'aven't let on to him how much I want it. I wouldn't" (Rose steadied her mouth to get the words out). "Not if it was ever so." "You darling," said Jane, and kissed her, and at that Rose burst into tears. "I oughtn't to be keeping you here," she said. And they left the bedroom. "Aren't you coming in?" said Jane. Rose had turned away from her at Tanqueray's door. "I can't," she whispered. "Not with me eyes all swelled up like this." She went down-stairs to her little kitchen, where in the half-darkness she crouched down beside Minny who, with humped shoulders and head that nodded to the fender, dozed before the fire. XXXVII Laura Gunning was writing a letter to Tanqueray to congratulate him on his book and to explain why she had not come to his birthday party. It was simply impossible to get off now. Papa, she said, couldn't be left for five minutes, not even with the morning paper. It was frightfully hard work getting all this into any intelligible form of words; getting it down at all was difficult. For the last hour she had been sitting there, starting and trembling at each rustle of the paper. Mr. Gunning could not settle down to reading now. He turned his paper over and over again in the vain search for distraction; he divided it into parts and became entangled in them; now he would cast them from him and trample them under his feet; and now they would be flapping about his head; he would be covered and utterly concealed in newspaper. It was a perpetual wind of newspaper, now high, now low; small, creeping sounds that rose to a crescendo; rushing, ripping, shrieking sounds of agitated newspaper, lacerating Laura's nerves, and murderous to the rhythm of her prose. Tears fell from Laura's eyes as she wrote; they dropped, disfiguring her letter. Her head ached. It was always aching now. And when she tried to write she felt as if she were weaving string out of the grey matter of her brain, with the thread breaking all the time. At four o'clock she rose wearily and began to get tea ready. Nina was coming to tea that afternoon. It was something to look forward to, something that would stave off the pressure and the pain.