ned herself a
few years ahead, calling him back when he was running off to play,
holding his resistant sturdiness in her arms while he gave her hasty,
smudged kisses and hugged his ball for more loving. But she reflected
that, while the character of those kisses would amuse her, they would
not satisfy her craving for contact so close that it was unity with his
warm young body, and she must set herself to be the most alluring mother
that ever lived, so that he would not struggle in her arms but would
give her back kiss for kiss. She flung her head back, sighing
triumphantly because she knew she could do it, but as her eyes met her
image in the mirror over the mantelpiece she was horrified to see how
little like a mother she was looking. Lips pursed with these long
imaginary kisses were too oppressive for a child's mouth; she had lost
utterly that sacred, radiating lethargy which hushes a house so that a
child may sleep: on a child's path her emanations were beginning to cast
not light but lightning.

She called out to herself: "You fool! If you really love Richard you
will let him run out to his game when he wants to, that he shall grow
strong and victorious, and if you call him back it must be to give him
an orange and not a kiss!" But it seemed to her that this would be a
sacrifice until, staring into the glass, she noticed that she was now
more beautiful than she had ever been, and then she saw the way by which
she could be satisfied. Harry must come back; she knew he was coming
back, for they had intercepted his letter to her, and they would not
have done that if it had been unloving. After she had weaned Richard she
must conceive again and let another child lift from him the excessive
burden of her love: then her mind and soul could go on in his company
without vexing him with these demands that only the unborn or the
nursling could satisfy. Then this second child would become separate
from her, and she must conceive again and again until this intense life
of the body failed in her and her flesh ceased to be a powerful artist
exulting in the creation of masterpieces. It must be so. For Richard's
sake it must be so. Her love would be too heavy a cloak for one child,
for it was meant to be a tent under which many should dwell. Again as in
the wood she laid her hand on her body and felt it as an inexhaustible
treasure. Again she was instantly mocked.

There had come, then, a knock at the door. She had felt a little
f