lmost anxiously.

"What is the matter, Dion?"

"Why? There is nothing the matter."

"Would you rather we never had that in our lives?"

"A child?"

"Yes, a child."

"I thought I longed for that," he answered.

"Do you meant that you have changed and don't long any more?"

"I suppose it's like this. When a man's very happy, perfectly happy, he
doesn't--perhaps he can't--want any change to come. If you're perfectly
happy instinctively you almost fear any change. Till to-day, till this
very minute perhaps, I thought I wanted to have a child--some day.
Perhaps I still do really, or perhaps I shall. But--you must forgive me,
I can't help it!--this evening, sitting here, I don't want anything to
come between us. It seems to me that even a child of ours would take
some of you away from me. Don't you see that?"

She shook her head.

"That's a man's feeling. I can't share it."

"But think--all the attention you would have to give to a child, all the
thoughts you would fasten on it, all the anxieties you'd have about it!"

"Well?"

"One only has a certain amount of time. You'd have to take away a good
deal, a great deal, of the time you can now give to me. Oh, it sounds
too beastly, I know! Perhaps I scarcely mean it! But surely you can see
how a man who loves a woman very much might, without being the least
bit unnatural, think, 'I'd like to keep every bit of her for myself.
I'd like to have her all to myself!' I dare say this feeling will pass.
Remember, Rose, we're only just married, and we're in Greece, right away
from every one. Don't think me morbidly jealous, or a beast. I'm not. I
expect lots of men have felt as I do, perhaps even till the first child
came."

"Ah, then it would be all right," she said. "The natural things, the
things nature intends, are always all right."

"How blessedly sane and central you are!"

"If we had a child--Dion, you must believe me!--we should be drawn ever
so much nearer together by it. If we ever do have one, we shall look
back on this time--you will--and think 'We were much farther apart then
than we are now.'"

"I don't like to hear you say that," he said gravely, almost with pain.

Could a woman like Rosamund be driven by an instinct blindly? She
was such a perfect type of womanhood. It would be almost a tragedy if
she--such a woman--died childless. Perhaps instinct had obscurely warned
her of that, had taught her where to look for a mate. He, Dion, had
always live