Maggy meant to disregard Woolf’s injunction against her going to Mrs. Lambert’s. The temptation to see Alexandra was too strong to resist. Moreover, she thought it likely that he would forget having made it. Then, if she went and he still objected, she would admit having disobeyed him. She would not lie about it. She never did tell lies; not on moral grounds but because lying was cowardly and she did not know the meaning of cowardice. Woolf had been a little overbearing with her lately, too much the master. She did not mind that sort of tyranny so long as it implied fondness, but she had a feeling that he was changing towards her. For one thing, she knew he was annoyed at her condition. That hurt her abominably. In books she had read of husbands and wives being drawn closer together, of estranged couples becoming reconciled under similar conditions. Indeed, she had hoped for special tenderness from him directly he knew they existed. She had even tried to delude herself into the hope that he might marry her. It was not that she wanted any legal hold on him. She would not have loved Woolf any more because of marriage. But if he married her it would be a guarantee of his love, which just now she had reason to doubt. That was all. The rights which marriage confer on a woman meant nothing to her. She only wanted to get rid of the nightmare dread of separation from him. Any other girl similarly situated would have stood out for marriage, but Maggy had too much pride for that. She recoiled from a more than possible refusal. She felt thrown back upon herself, lonely in spirit. A faintness assailed her whenever she thought of what she would have to undergo without a soul knowing of it except Woolf. And on this subject, so closely connecting them, Woolf was cold and remote. He would have shown more concern had she cut her finger. She wanted comfort. It would have helped her to confide in some sympathetic woman. She wondered whether she dared tell Alexandra, and decided that it would not be fair or even expedient. Virginal Alexandra would not understand, or if she understood she would be more afraid than Maggy herself. Obviously she could neither reassure nor comfort her, since the thing was right out of her experience, and always would be. Poor Maggy! Her abundant vitality, her pulsing affections, made motherhood infinitely desirable to her. As a child she had scarcely had time to play with dolls because she was always on the stage, but she had always yearned over babies. Nature, which takes no account of the individual, concerned only with the reproduction of the race, had intended her to be a mother. Man-made shibboleths were to deny her that right.