She bent over him, enravished by the brilliant bloom of his creamy skin
and the black blaze of his eyes, which had been black from birth, as
hardly any children's are; turned him over and kissed the delicate crook
of his knees and the straight column of his spine and the little square
wings of his shoulder-blades, and then she turned him back again and
jeered at him because he wore the phlegmatic, pasha-like smile of an
adored baby. She became vexed with love for him, and longed to clasp
him, to crush him as she knew she must not. She put on his
night-clothes, kissing him extravagantly and unsatedly, and when she
finished he wailed and nuzzled to her breast. "Oh, no, you greedy little
thing," she cried, for it was a quarter of an hour before he should have
been fed again, but a wave of love passed through her and she took him
to her. They were fused, they were utterly content with one another. He
finished, smacking his lips like an old epicure. "Oh, my darling love!"
she cried, and put him back into the cot and ran downstairs. If she
stayed longer she would keep him awake with her kisses and play. She was
brightened and full of silent laughter, like a girl who escapes from her
sweetheart.

Grandmother sat very quietly at her sewing and soon went upstairs.
Grandmother was getting very old. When she said "Good-night" she seemed
to be speaking out of the cavern of some preoccupation, and when she
went upstairs her shawl fell from her shoulders and trailed its corner
on the ground. Marion hoped that the old lady had not worn herself out
by worrying about her, and she pulled out the sewing that had been shut
up in the work-basket and meditated finishing it, but she was too tired.
Nowadays she knew a fatigue which she could yield to frankly, as it was
honourable to her organism, and meant that her strength was going into
her milk and not into her blood. She folded her arms on the table and
laid her head on them and thought of Richard. It was his monthly
birthday to-day. He was three months old. She grieved to think that she
could feed him for only six months more. How could she endure to be
quite separate from him? Sometimes even now she regretted that the time
had gone when he was within her, so that each of her heartbeats was a
caress to him, to which his little heart replied, and she would feel
utterly desolate and hungry when she could no longer join him to her
bosom. But she would always be able to kiss him. She imagi