"You don't know what it would do," he said. She thought: "I don't want it. I don't want anything but you." "That's why," he went on, "I'm giving Don as the next of kin--the one they'll wire to; because it won't take him that way; it'll only make him madder to get out and do for them. I'm afraid of you or Mummy or Dad, or Michael being told first." "It doesn't matter a bit who's _told_ first. I shall _know_ first," she said. "And you needn't be afraid. It won't kill either me or the baby. If a shock could kill me I should have died long ago." "When?" "When you went to Desmond. Then, when I thought I couldn't bear it any longer, something happened." "What?" "I don't know. I don't know what it _is_ now; I only know what it does. It always happens--always--when you want it awfully. And when you're quiet and give yourself up to it." "It'll happen again." He listened, frowning a little, not quite at ease, not quite interested; puzzled, as if he had lost her trail; put off, as if something had come between him and her. "You can make it happen to other people," she was saying; "so that when things get too awful they can bear them. I wanted it to happen to Dorothy when she was in prison, and it did. She said she was absolutely happy there; and that all sorts of queer things came to her. And, Nicky, they were the same queer things that came to me. It was like something getting through to her." "I say--did you ever do it to me?" "Only once, when you wanted it awfully." "When? When?" Now he was interested; he was intrigued; he was on her trail. "When Desmond did--that awful thing. I wanted you to see that it didn't matter, it wasn't the end." "But that's just what I did see, what I kept on telling myself. It looks as if it worked, then?" "It doesn't always. It comes and goes. But I think with _you_ it would always come; because you're more _me_ than other people; I mean I care more for you." She closed and clinched it. "That's why you're not to bother about me, Nicky. If _the_ most awful thing happened, and you didn't come back, It would come." "I wish I knew what It was," he said. "I don't know what it is. But it's so real that I think it's God." "That's why _they're_ so magnificently brave--Dorothy and Aunt Frances and all of them. They don't believe in it; they don't know it's there; even Michael doesn't know it's there--yet; and still they go on bearing and bearing; and they were glad to give you up." "I know," he said; "lots of people _say_ they're glad, but they really _are_ glad." He meditated.