ten examination. It's not a bit of use swotting a thing
half heartedly."

She dragged herself to attention, reproaching herself for damping his
interest. Things he was saying dropped into her consciousness like heavy
drops of rain falling from the eaves in a light summer shower. Suddenly
she gripped his wrist tensely and he looked up in surprise. Her face was
flushed, her eyes shining and sending out little flashes. He had never
seen her like this before. His pencil and paper dropped. The paper
fluttered over the wall, the pencil dropped after it.

"There, that's my only pencil," he said. "You have got the jerks, old
lady. What's wrong?"

"Why, Louis, we must be going to have a baby! I've been wondering--" She
broke off suddenly, flushing, and would say no more.

His mouth came open as he stared at her, and looked so funny that she
laughed.

"Aren't you pleased? Oh Louis, isn't it splendid--isn't it a _shining_
sort of thing to have happen to you!"

She felt it impossible to sit still; something bubbled up within her
like fire; it was a touch of the old exhilaration she had felt on cold
mornings in the sea at Lashnagar. She wanted to take his hands and go
flying away with him, jumping from star to star in the thrilling blue
sky. As it was she stood on one foot, as if poised for flight with a
sort of spring in her movements that his softer muscles had never
experienced. He caught at her hand, and felt it taut, and queerly,
individually alive.

"Oh, do say something nice!" she cried. "Louis, I've a good mind to push
you off the roof--like the queen bee."

They had been reading about the queen bee's amiable dealings with her
lovers a few days ago.

"Well, I'm damned!" he cried. He got an impression of her as a captive
balloon that had dragged loose its grapnel, and was being tugged at by
currents far above the earth, where the air was heavy and motionless. He
gripped her hand still tighter.

"Look here, young person, you sit down here and tell me all you mean,"
he said. She stared at him. He suddenly looked much more responsible. It
was the doctor in him suddenly awakened to new life. He had not felt
the birth struggles of the lover or the father yet.

"But you're not ill and tired like women are. I can't believe it," he
objected, frowning with a sort of diagnostic eye upon her.

"Why should I be?" she said, laughing and rumpling his hair which was
very straight and neat and made him look too elderly for her