"We're going to have a baby in October," she said. He stared at her for a minute without a word, then drew in a deep breath and pressed his hands against his eyes. All he could say at first was just her name. But he dropped down beside her and got her in his arms. "So that's it," he said raggedly at last. "Oh, Rose, darling, it's such a relief! I've been so terrified about you--so afraid something had gone wrong. And you wouldn't let me ask, and you seemed so unhappy. I'd even thought of talking to Randolph. I might have guessed, I suppose. I've been stupid about it. But, you darling, I understand it all now." She didn't see just what he meant by that, but she didn't care. It was such a wonderful thing to stop fighting and let the tension relax, cuddle close into his embrace, and know nothing in the world but the one fact that he loved her; that their tale of golden hours wasn't spent--was, perhaps, illimitable. She was even too drowsily happy to think what he meant when he said a little later: "So now you won't let anything trouble you, will you, child? And if queer worrying ideas get into your head about the way we live, and about being a drag on me and making me hate you, you'll laugh at them? You'll be able to laugh, because you'll know why they're there." It wasn't until the next day that she recalled that remark of his and analyzed it. It meant, of course, that she was beaten; that her first fight for the big thing had been in vain. There would be no use, for the present, in renewing the struggle. He'd taken the one ground that was impregnable. So long as he could go on honestly interpreting every plea of hers for a share in the hard part of his life as well as in the soft part of it, for a way of life that would make them something more than lovers--as wholly subjective to herself, the inevitable accompaniment of her physical condition--the pleas and the struggles would indeed be wasted. She'd have to wait. CHAPTER X THE DOOR THAT WAS TO OPEN She would have to wait. Accepted, root and branch, as Rose was forced by her husband's attitude to accept it, a conclusion of that sort can be a wonderful anodyne. And so it proved in her ease. Indeed, within a day after her talk with Rodney, though it had ended in total defeat, she felt like a person awakened out of a nightmare. There had taken place, somehow, an enormous letting-off of strain--a heavenly relaxation of spiritual muscles. It was so good just to have him know; to have others know, as all her world did within the next week! Ultimately nothing was changed, of course. The great thing that she had promised Portia she wouldn't fail in getting--the real thing that should solve the problem, equalize the disparity between her husband and herself and give them a life together in satisfying completeness beyond the joys of a pair of lovers;--that was still to be fought for.