The thought of her baby was to Mary like the opening of the gates of paradise to Christian the Pilgrim. Her heart shook with joy of it. She passed through her days now only half conscious of the world about her. She had, together with her joy, an extraordinary sense of physical well-being, of the actual value of the body. For the first time she became actively interested in her beauty. Even on her honeymoon she had never dressed to please her husband with the care she now gave to the donning of her loose pink and white negligées and the little boudoir caps she had bought to wear with them. That Stefan paid her fewer compliments, that he often failed to notice small additions to her wardrobe, affected her not at all. “Afterwards he will be pleased; afterwards he will love me more than ever,” she thought, but, even so, knew that it was not for him she was now fair, but for that other. She did not love Stefan less, but her love was to be made flesh, and it was that incarnation she now adored. If she had been given to self-analysis she might have asked what it boded that she had never--save for that one moment's adoration of his genius the day he completed the Danaë--felt for Stefan the abandonment of love she felt for his coming child. She might have wondered, but she did not, for she felt too intensely in these days to have much need of thought. She loved her husband--he was a great man--they were to have a child. The sense of those three facts made up her cosmos. Farraday had asked her in vain on more than one occasion for another manuscript. The last time she shook her head, with one of her rare attempts at explanation, made less rarely to him than to her other friends. “No, Mr. Farraday, I can't think about imaginary children just now. There's a spell over me--all the world waits, and I'm holding my breath. Do you see?” He took her hand between both his. “Yes, my dear child, I do,” he answered, his mouth twisting into its sad and gentle smile. He had come bringing a sheaf of spring flowers, narcissus, and golden daffodils, which she was holding in her lap. He thought as he said good-bye that she looked much more like Persephone than the Demeter of Stefan's picture. In spite of her deep-seated emotion, Mary was gay and practical enough in these late winter days, with her small household tasks, her occasional shopping, and her sewing. This last had begun vaguely to irritate Stefan, so incessant was it. “Mary, do put down that sewing,” he would exclaim; or “Don't sing the song of the shirt any more to-day;” and she would laughingly fold her work, only to take it up instinctively again a few minutes later.