love her. If
he had loved her he would have cared intolerably. He didn't care about
Headley Richards because he didn't care about Desmond any more. He was
only puzzled.

"Why did you do it?"

"I can't think why. I must have been off my head. I didn't know what it
was like. I didn't know. I thought it would be wonderful and beautiful.
I thought he was wonderful and beautiful."

"Poor little Desmond."

"Oh, Nicky, do you think me a beast? Does it make you hate me?"

"No. Of course it doesn't. The only awful thing is--"

"What? Tell me."

"Well--you see--"

"You mean the baby? I know it's awful. You needn't tell me that, Nicky."

He stared at her.

"I mean it's so awful for _it_."

She thought he had been thinking of himself and her.

"Why should it be?"

"Why? There isn't any why. It just is. I _know_ it is."

He was thinking of Veronica.

"You see," he said simply, "that's why this sort of thing is such a
rotten game. It's so hard on the kiddy. I suppose you didn't think of
that. You couldn't have, or else you wouldn't--"

He paused. There was one thing he had to know. He must get it out of
her.

"It hasn't made you feel that you don't want it?"

"Oh--I don't know what I want--_now_. I don't know what it makes me
feel!"

"Don't let it, Desmond. Don't let it. It'll be all right. You won't feel
like that when you've married me. Can't you see that _that's_ the
wonderful and beautiful part?"

"_What_ is?" she said in her tired drawl.

"_It_--the poor kiddy."

Because he remembered Veronica he was going to marry Desmond.

* * * * *

Veronica's mother was the first to hear about it. Desmond told her.

Veronica's mother was determined to stop it for the sake of everybody
concerned.

She wrote to Nicholas and asked him to come and dine with her one
evening when Lawrence Stephen was dining somewhere else. (Lawrence
Stephen made rather a point of not going to houses where Vera was not
received; but sometimes, when the occasion was political, or otherwise
important, he had to. That was her punishment, as Bartholomew had meant
that it should be.)

Nicky knew what he had been sent for, and to all his aunt's assaults and
manoeuvres he presented an inexpugnable front.

"You mustn't do it; you simply mustn't."

He intimated that his marriage was his own affair.

"It isn't. It's the affair of everybody who cares for you."

"Their caring isn't my affair," said Nick