He jumped up, his eyes blank, hands thrust in his pockets. “I don't get you, Mary. You don't mean--you surely can't mean, that you don't want to go to France _at all_? That you want to _live_ here?” She floundered. “I don't know, Stefan. Of course you've always talked about France, and I should love to go there and see it, and so on, but somehow I've come to think of the Byrdsnest as home--we've been so happy here--” “Happy?” he interrupted her. “You say we've been happy?” His tone was utterly confounded. “Yes, dear, except--except when you were so--so busy last autumn--” He dropped down by the table, squaring himself as if to get to the bottom of a riddle. “What is your idea of happiness, Mary, of _life_ in fact?” he asked, in an unusually quiet voice. She felt glad that he seemed so willing to talk things over, and to concede her a point of view of her own. “Well,” she began, feeling for her words, “my idea of life is to have a person and work that you love, and then to build--both of you--a place, a position; to have friends--be part of the community--so that your children--the immortal part of you--may grow up in a more and more enriching atmosphere.” She paused, while he watched her, motionless. “I can't imagine,” she went on, “greater happiness for two people than to see their children growing up strong and useful--tall sons and daughters to be proud of, such as all the generations before us have had. Something to hand our life on to--as it was in the beginning--you know, Stefan--” She flushed with the effort to express. “Then,”--his voice was quieter still; she did not see that his hands were clenched under the flap of the table--“in this scheme of life of yours, how many children--how many servants, rooms, all that sort of thing--should you consider necessary?” She smiled. “As for houses, servants and things, that just depends on one's income. I hate ostentation, but I do like a beautifully run house, and I adore horses and dogs and things. But the children--” she flushed again--“why, dearest, I think any couple ought to be simply too thankful for all the children they can have. Unless, perhaps,” she added naïvely, “they're frightfully poor.” “Where should people live to be happy in this way?” he asked, still in those carefully quiet tones. She was looking out of the window, trying to formulate her thoughts. “I don't think it matters very much _where_ one lives,” she said in her soft, clear tones, “as long as one has friends, and is not too much in the city. But to own one's house, and the ground under one, to be able to leave it to one's son, to think of _his_ son being born in it--that I think would add enormously to one's happiness. To belong to the place one lives in, whether it's an old country, or one of the colonies, or anywhere.”