"Oh, yes," said Ingeborg. "I know. But it's all natural." "Certainly it is natural. Nevertheless--" The Baroness stopped grimly, screwed up her mouth, and shook her head three times with an awful suggestiveness. Ingeborg looked at her, and then suddenly some words out of her cathedral-going days at Redchester flashed into her mind. She had totally forgotten them, and now her memory began jerking them together. They came, she knew, in the Prayer-book somewhere; was it in the Litany? No; but anyhow they were in that truthful book, the Book of Common Prayer, and they were--yes, that was it: _The great danger of child-birth._ Yes; and again: _The great pain and peril of child-birth._ A quick flush came into her face, and for the first time a look of fear into her eyes. She sat up, leaning on both her hands, and stared at the Baroness. "Is it so very dreadful?" she asked. The Baroness merely shook her head. "It can't be _very_" said Ingeborg, watching the Baroness's expression in search of agreement, "or there wouldn't be any mothers left." The Baroness went on screwing up her mouth and shaking her head. "It must be _bearable_," said Ingeborg again, anxiously. The Baroness would not commit herself. "They'd die, you see, if it wasn't--the mothers all would. But there seem"--her voice trembled a little in her desire for the Baroness's agreement--"there seem to be lots of mothers still about." She paused, but the Baroness continued not to commit herself. "I can bear anything," said Ingeborg, with a great show of pride and a voice that trembled, "if it's--if it's reasonable." "It is not reasonable," said the Baroness. "It is the Will of God." "Oh, that's the same thing, the same thing," said Ingeborg, throwing herself back on her cushions and nervously pulling some white pinks she had been smelling to pieces. She was ashamed of her terror. But all that evening she was restless and nervous, struggling with this new feeling of fear. She could not keep still, but walked about the sitting-room while Robert ate his supper at the table, pressing her cold hands together, trying to reason herself into tranquillity again. She stood still a moment watching Robert's quiet black back as he bent over his supper. Then she went over to him impulsively and rubbed both her hands quickly through his hair, which had not been cut for some time, making it stand up on ends. "There!" she said. "Now you look _really_ sweet." And she bent and kissed him, lingeringly, on the back of his neck. He was near her, he was alive, she could hold on to him for a little before she went alone into whatever it was of icy and awful and unknown that waited for her. "Good little wife," he said, still going on eating, but putting his left arm round her while his right continued to do what was necessary with the supper, and not looking up.