But she did in the end hear, and drew herself a little back from him to look at him with a new interest. It seemed the oddest thing that he, so busy, so nearly always somewhere else in thought, so deeply and frequently absent from the surface of life, so entirely occupied by his work that often he could hardly remember he had a wife, should want to have yet another object of the kind added unto him, a child; and that she who lived altogether on the surface, who knew, as it were, the very taste of each of the day's minutes and possessed them all, who never lost consciousness of the present and never for an instant let go of her awareness of the visible and the now, should be without any such desire. "But," she said, "we're so happy. We're so happy as we are." "It is nothing compared to what we would be." "But I haven't even begun to get used to _this_ happiness yet--to the one I've got." "You will infinitely prefer the one that is yet to come." "But Robert--don't rush me along. Don't let us rush past what we've got. Let us love all this thoroughly first--" He looked at her very gravely. "We have now been married two months," he said. "I become anxious. To-night--I cannot tell you how glad I was. And then--it was nothing after all." She gazed at him with a feeling of a new incumbency. He had said the last words in a voice she did not know, with a catch in it. "Robert--" she said quickly, putting out her hand and touching his with a little soft stroking movement. She wished above all things to make him perfectly happy. Always she had loved making people happy. And she was so grateful to him, so grateful for the freedom she had got through him, that just her gratitude even if she had not loved him would have made her try to do and be everything he wished. But she did love him. She certainly loved him. And here was something he seemed to want beyond everything, and that she alone could provide him with. He turned his head away; and as he did this did she see something actually glistening in his eyes, glistening like something wet? In an instant she had put her arms round him. "Of course I do--of course I want one," she said, rubbing her cheek up and down his mackintosh, "some--heaps--of course we'll have them--everybody has them--of course I'll soon begin--don't mind my not having been ill to-night--I'm so sorry--I _will_ be ill--dear Robert--I didn't know I had to be ill--but I will be soon--I'm sure I will be--I--I feel quite like _soon_ being ill now--" He patted her face, his face still turned away. "Good little wife," he said; "good little wife."