wakened
mood of ecstasy. "It's too splendid! It's a funny thing, I've never
thought of having babies before. I've always been a Knight, you know.
And knights don't have babies. Oh Louis, wouldn't they look funny,
riding out to battle with babies on a pillion behind them? Fancy
Parsifal with a baby! Or St. George! Yet why shouldn't they have them?
And why shouldn't they go to battle? It would be good training for them,
wouldn't it? They're so soft."

It was impossible for him to stop her. For the first time in her life
her tongue was loosened; she talked floods of nonsense, happy, enchanted
nonsense. But Louis would not lose his diagnostic eye.

"But didn't you know before?" he persisted.

"No. Do you think I'd have been such a selfish hog as to keep it to
myself?"

"But you've read biology--you ought to have known how things happen."

"Oh, bother biology! Who ever thought of biology meaning themselves? I
didn't, anyway. I never think things in books refer to me. Fancy a
skeleton meaning oneself! Mustn't a skeleton feel immodest? Louis, when
I'm dead, do find some way of disintegrating me, will you? I couldn't
bear to look as immodest as a skeleton does."

After awhile she became quiet, but still bubbling over with
irrepressible happiness. Louis was unusually gentle as they sat talking
in whispers as though afraid the stars would hear their secret as they
came out one by one and looked at them.

"I can't believe it, yet," he said at last.

"Don't worry, then. You will soon enough. Louis--how long is it?" she
said, puckering her forehead. He made calculations.

"More than six months," he said.

"Oh, what a long time! I don't believe I'll ever be able to wait so long
as that. It's like being told the king is coming--and having to wait six
months. It _is_ a long time to wait till he's ready, isn't it?"

Suddenly he caught at her hand and kissed it. Presently he went
downstairs, leaving her there. To her amazement he appeared later with
the mattress and pillows. He had always left her to carry them before.
She gathered that it was her role to be waited on, and resented it.

"We'll sleep up here to-night, girlie," he said. "I know you like it."

"It almost seems a waste of time to sleep, doesn't it?" she said, her
eyes filled with dreams. "And yet all the while, whether we're awake or
asleep, talking or working, he's getting nearer and nearer--without our
doing anything towards it!" Her eyes, as she spoke, wer