"Business--" she said at last.
"Business with me?"
"Most important business." She was lying, white and
limp, in the dusty chair.
"Before business you must get well; this is the best wine."
She refused it feebly. He poured out a glass. She
drank it. As she did so she became self-conscious. However
important the business, it was not proper of her to have
called on him, or to accept his hospitality.
"Perhaps you are engaged," she said. "And as I am not
very well--"
"You are not well enough to go back. And I am not engaged."
She looked nervously at the other room.
"Ah, now I understand," he exclaimed. "Now I see what
frightened you. But why did you never speak?" And taking
her into the room where he lived, he pointed to--the baby.
She had thought so much about this baby, of its welfare,
its soul, its morals, its probable defects. But, like most
unmarried people, she had only thought of it as a word--just
as the healthy man only thinks of the word death, not of
death itself. The real thing, lying asleep on a dirty rug,
disconcerted her. It did not stand for a principle any
longer. It was so much flesh and blood, so many inches and
ounces of life--a glorious, unquestionable fact, which a man
and another woman had given to the world. You could talk to
it; in time it would answer you; in time it would not answer
you unless it chose, but would secrete, within the compass
of its body, thoughts and wonderful passions of its own.
Pages:
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149