that little bell-like euphony; those funny
little lucid and level trills.

There was no stint of that charm when William was not reading to us.
Mary was in no awe of him, apart from his work, and in no awe at all of
me: she used to laugh at us both, for one thing and another--just the
same laugh as I had first heard when William tried to unharness the
pony. I cultivated in myself whatever amused her in me; I drew out
whatever amused her in William; I never let slip any of the things
that amused her in herself. 'Chaff' is a great bond; and I should have
enjoyed our bouts of it even without Mary's own special obbligato. She
used to call me (for I was very urban in those days) the Gentleman from
London. I used to call her the Brave Little Woman. Whatever either of us
said or did could be twisted easily into relation to those two titles;
and our bouts, to which William listened with a puzzled, benevolent
smile, used to cease only because Mary regarded me as a possible
purveyor of what William, she was sure, wanted and needed, down there in
the country, alone with her: intellectual conversation, after his work.
She often, I think, invented duties in garden or kitchen so that he
should have this stimulus, or luxury, without hindrance. But when
William was alone with me it was about her that he liked to talk, and
that I myself liked to talk too. He was very sound on the subject of
Mary; and so was I. And if, when I was alone with Mary, I seemed to be
sounder than I was on the subject of William's wonderfulness, who shall
blame me?

Had Mary been a mother, William's wonderfulness would have been less
greatly important. But he was her child as well as her lover. And I
think, though I do not know, she believed herself content that this
should always be, if so it were destined. It was not destined so. On the
first night of a visit I paid them in April, 1899, William, when we
were alone, told me news. I had been vaguely conscious, throughout the
evening, of some change; conscious that Mary had grown gayer, and less
gay--somehow different, somehow remote. William said that her child
would be born in September, if all went well. 'She's immensely happy,'
he told me. I realised that she was indeed happier than ever... 'And
of course it would be a wonderful thing, for both of us,' he said
presently, 'to have a son--or a daughter.' I asked him which he would
rather it were, a son or a daughter. 'Oh, either,' he answered wearily.
It was