onderfully had succeeded in
winning. She put herself before him now in a different light, and he
saw in her new and beautiful possibilities. While she was talking his
imagination began to play about the child, and presently he realized
that he was thinking of it as a boy. Then, in a moment, he realized that
on the previous evening he had thought of a male, not of a female child.
With this in his mind he said abruptly:

"What sort of a child do you wish to have, Rosamund?"

"What sort?" she said, looking at him with surprise in her brown eyes.

"Yes."

"What do you mean? A beautiful, strong, healthy child, of course, the
sort of child every married woman longs to have, and imagines having
till it comes."

"Beautiful, strong, healthy!" he repeated, returning her look. "Of
course it could only be that--your child. But I meant, do you want it to
be a boy or a girl?"

"Oh!"

She paused, and looked away from him and down at the uncemented marble
blocks which form the pavement of the Parthenon.

"Well?" he said, as she kept silence.

"If it were to be a girl I should love it."

"You wish it to be a girl?"

"I didn't say that. The fact is, Dion"--and now she again looked at him,
"I have always thought of our child as a boy. That's why your question
almost startled me. I have never even once thought of having a girl. I
don't know why."

"I think I do."

"Why then?"

"The thought was born of the desire. You wanted our child to be a son
and so you thought of it as a son."

"Perhaps that was it."

"Wasn't it?"

He spoke with a certain pressure. She remained silent for a moment, and
two little vertical lines appeared in her forehead. Then she said:

"Yes, I believe it was. And you?"

"I confess that when yesterday we spoke of a child I was thinking all
the time about a boy."

She gazed at him with something visionary in her eyes, which made them
look for a moment like the eyes of a woman whom he had not seen till
now. Then she said quietly:

"It will be a boy, I think. Indeed, if it weren't perhaps absurd, I
should say that I know it will be a boy."

He said nothing more just then, but at that moment he felt as if he,
too, knew, not merely hoped, or guessed, something about their joint
future, knew in the depths of him that a boy-child would some day be
sent to Rosamund and to him, to influence and to change their lives.

The wind began to fail almost suddenly, the sky grew brighter, a shaft
of sun l