ecognized at length his own limitation, and the limitation of
his power. He had to give in.

There was a stillness, a wanness between them. Half at least
of the battle was over. Sometimes she wept as she went about,
her heart was very heavy. But the child was always warm in her
womb.

They were friends again, new, subdued friends. But there was
a wanness between them. They slept together once more, very
quietly, and distinct, not one together as before. And she was
intimate with him as at first. But he was very quiet, and not
intimate. He was glad in his soul, but for the time being he was
not alive.

He could sleep with her, and let her be. He could be alone
now. He had just learned what it was to be able to be alone. It
was right and peaceful. She had given him a new, deeper freedom.
The world might be a welter of uncertainty, but he was himself
now. He had come into his own existence. He was born for a
second time, born at last unto himself, out of the vast body of
humanity. Now at last he had a separate identity, he existed
alone, even if he were not quite alone. Before he had only
existed in so far as he had relations with another being. Now he
had an absolute self--as well as a relative self.

But it was a very dumb, weak, helpless self, a crawling
nursling. He went about very quiet, and in a way, submissive. He
had an unalterable self at last, free, separate,
independent.

She was relieved, she was free of him. She had given him to
himself. She wept sometimes with tiredness and helplessness. But
he was a husband. And she seemed, in the child that was coming,
to forget. It seemed to make her warm and drowsy. She lapsed
into a long muse, indistinct, warm, vague, unwilling to be taken
out of her vagueness. And she rested on him also.

Sometimes she came to him with a strange light in her eyes,
poignant, pathetic, as if she were asking for something. He
looked and he could not understand. She was so beautiful, so
visionary, the rays seemed to go out of his breast to her, like
a shining. He was there for her, all for her. And she would hold
his breast, and kiss it, and kiss it, kneeling beside him, she
who was waiting for the hour of her delivery. And he would lie
looking down at his breast, till it seemed that his breast was
not himself, that he had left it lying there. Yet it was himself
also, and beautiful and bright with her kisses. He was glad with
a strange, radiant pain. Whilst she kneeled beside him