"If you don't look more cheerful, Major, I shall cry. I've never done so yet, but I'm sure I've got it in me." I stretched out my hand. She took it, and, still holding it, seated herself on a footstool close to my chair. "There are such a lot of things that occur to me," I said. "Things that your poor mother, if she were alive, would be more fitted to touch on than myself." "Such as--" She knelt by me and gave me both her hands. It was a pretty way she had. She had begun it soon after her head overtopped mine in my eternal wheelbarrow. There was a little mockery in her eyes. "Well--" said I. "You know what marriage means. There is the question of children." She broke into frank laughter. "My darling Majy--" That is the penalty one pays for admitting irresponsible modern young people into one's intimacy. They miscall one abominably. I thought she had outgrown this childish, though affectionate appellation of disrespect. "My darling Majy!" she said. "Children! How many do you think I'm going to have?" I was taken aback. There was this pure, proud, laughing young face a foot away from me. I said in desperation:-- "You know very well what I mean, young woman. I want to put things clearly before you--" It is the most difficult thing in the world for a man--even without legs--to talk straight about the facts of life to a young girl. He has no idea how much she knows about them and how much she doesn't. To tear away veils and reveal frightening starkness is an act from which he shrinks with all the modesty of a (perhaps) deluded sex. I took courage. "I want," I repeated, "to put things clearly before you. You are marrying this young man. You will have a week's married life. He goes away like a gallant fellow to fight for his country. He may be killed in the course of the next few weeks. Like a brave girl you've got to face it. In the course of time a child may be born--without a father to look after him. It's a terrific responsibility." She knelt upright and put both her hands on my shoulders, almost embracing me, and the laughter died away from her eyes, giving place to something which awakened memories of what I had seen once or twice in the eyes of the dearest of all women. She put her face very close to mine and whispered: "Don't you see, dear, it's in some sort of way because of that? Don't you think it would be awful for a strong, clean, brave English life like his to go out without leaving behind him someone to--well, you know what I mean--to carry on the same traditions--to be the same clean brave Englishman in the future?" I smiled and nodded. Quite a different kind of nod from the previous one. "Thousands of girls are doing it, you dear old Early Victorian, and aren't ashamed to say so to those who really love and can understand them. And you do love and understand, don't you?" She set me off at arm's length, and held me with her bright unflinching eyes.