into an amazed exaltation from which she dipped suddenly to some
practical consideration that she must settle at once. Her eyes hovered
about Marion's and met them shyly, and she stammered softly, "Does
having a baby hurt very much?" She did not feel at all disturbed when
Marion answered, "Yes," though that was the word she had been dreading,
for the speech she added, "If the child is going to be worth while it
always hurts, but one does not care," seemed to her one of those sombre
and heartening things like "King Lear," or the black line of the
Pentland Hills against the sky, which she felt took fear from life,
since they showed it black and barren of comfort and yet more than ever
beautiful. It settled her practical consideration: she had known that
she would have to have children, because all married people did, but now
she would look forward to it without cowardice and without regret. Now
she could soar again to her amazed exaltation and contemplate the woman
who had given her Richard.

Even yet she was not clear concerning the processes of birth. But in her
mind's eye she saw Marion lying on a narrow bed, her body clenched under
the blankets; and her face pale and concave at cheek and temple with
sickness and persecuted resolution, holding at bay with her will a crowd
of doctors pressing round her with scalpels in their hands, preserving
by her tensity the miracle of life that was to be Richard. If she had
relaxed, the world would not have been habitable, existence would have
rolled through few and inferior phases. When she stood at the windows of
Grand-Aunt's house on Liberton Brae every evening after mother's death
she would have seen nothing but dark glass patterned with uncheering
suns of reflecting gaslight, and beyond a white roadway climbed by
anonymous travellers. She would have wept: not waited, as she did, for
the sound of the motorcycle that was driven with the dearest
recklessness and would bring joy with it. She would never have had
occasion to run to the door and open it impetuously to life. Her
sensibility would have strayed on the dreary level of controlled grief.
It would not have sank under her, deliciously and dangerously, leaving
her to stand quite paralysed while he flung off his cap and coat and
gauntlets with those indolent, violent gestures, and whispered to her
till his arms were free and he could stop her heart for a second with
his long first kiss.

She would have sat all evening in th