When you repeated that to me that afternoon you said there was no
fighting against it. If you hold Piers to you now, you will steal his
chance of wife and home and children."

"Ah, there they are again--those children!" Vanna's lip curled in
bitter passion. "Those visionary children who are for ever cropping up
to block the way. No legal form can make a wife and home. I am more to
Piers than any other woman, despite all my limitations; his home is
where I am. Why should I be sacrificed, a live woman, with all my
powers strong within me, for the sake of problematic infants who may
never arrive? And if they did, is it all joy to be a father? Are you
sure that the joy equals the pain? Your father was broken-hearted that
day when you left him with a smile. You did not trouble about him; why
should I give up everything for the sake of possible children?"

There was silence for several moments; then Jean spoke:

"Vanna, you talk as if I did not _want_ you to be happy. Ask Robert!
He'll tell you how often I have spoken about you; how I've cried in the
midst of my own happiness to think you could never have the same. But
this! Oh, it's a mistake, dear; it's a mistake; it will land you in
worse trouble. Piers will never be content; you won't be content
yourself; it won't be happiness, but a long, long fret."

"Other people--married people, happy married people--look back and call
the years of their engagement the happiest time of their lives. I've
heard them. You've heard them yourself."

"Yes. But why? They lived in the future, building castles, the castles
in which they were to live. If you could have heard them talking when
they were alone, you would have found that it was almost always about
the future--When shall we be married? Where shall we go for our
honeymoon? Where shall we live? They imagined it all sunshine, all
joy; and when the reality came, and its shadows, and ups and downs, they
looked back, and realised how happy and unburdened they had been. But,
Vanna dear, if you take away the future--if there is no looking
forward--a dread, instead of a hope--"

Vanna shivered, but she held herself erect, and took no heed of the hand
held out towards her. She looked round the beautiful, luxurious room,
at the glowing stained-glass window, which shut out the grey aspect of
the outer world, and as she did so, bitterness arose. Once more the
knife-edged question cleft her heart. Why should the u