He did not finish thinking what he was about to think. A sort of shock passed through him, he caught his breath, looked off, the faintest shade of embarrassment in this look addressed to the ceiling, but not painful. On the contrary you might have inferred that this was a pleasurable confusion. He was instantly calmed, no longer disturbed about Helen. He stared at her politely as at an unknown but highly satisfactory phenomenon. He had no experience in a case like this, but he had instincts. Every young husband is a father, at least by anticipation. His impression was that she must be soothed, kept quiet. He bent and kissed her gravely, as you kiss the Bible when you take an oath. “Don’t worry, my sweet; you will come around all right,” he told her. She turned her face away, closed her eyes in tearful despair. He had not answered her question. He had evaded with soft words. This would never do. She was beginning to weep again. He said he would go to the phone and call her mother. “Don’t call mother. She has been here all afternoon,” she cried. So, then Mrs. Adams knew. Well, he didn’t care if the whole world knew. “Helen, you must not let go like this. You will hurt yourself,” he said with a note of authority. Her ears heard him; her eyes caught him. For one moment she lay still and sobless. Then she sat up, hair streaming over her shoulders, cheeks reddening. “You too!” she cried. “Oh, you have all had the same thought in your minds. And it isn’t so,” she informed him. “Well, if nothing is the matter, what is the matter?” he demanded after a pause in the voice of a man sliding from the top of a climax. “That is,” covering her face with her hands. “Your mother, my mother, you, too, all of you have been expecting something that may never happen. And I did not know, did not realize until this day the meaning of these hints, these questions, this solicitude. It was not for me. I do not deserve it, you understand. I am not that way.” Oh! her Heavenly Father, she knew what was before her now if she never had a child. She would not be the same to him! “Of course you will, you silly darling,” he laughed, gathering her in his arms. “The fact is, I am immensely relieved.” In this wise they took a new lease on their happiness. Helen’s skies cleared. It was good to be free and well and just a girl “a while longer,” as George put it. Still this was a form of probation. That phrase, “a while longer,” was the involuntary admission he made of his ultimate expectations. For his own part, he declared it was much better for him to make some headway in the bank before they could really afford the expensive luxury of having children. Still he felt a bit let down at the contemplation for the first time of the bare possibility of his wife not bearing these children for him.