arette.

"Can't you sleep?" she murmured drowsily.

"I'm thinking about you," he said gloomily. "Marcella, I was a cad to
bring you out here into the backblocks, just because I wanted to escape
temptation. You need civilization just now--you need all the comforts of
civilization--care and--Oh the million things a woman needs."

"Oh, Louis, do be quiet!" she said, "all I need at this moment is a good
sleep."

He lay down again for ten minutes. Once more he started up, dragging the
blanket right away from her.

"How can you expect me to sleep? Marcella, what right had I to make you
have a child? We've no money."

"They don't cost anything," she said wide-awake now.

He made a gesture of impatience.

"We've no home--you've no attention."

She sighed.

"Listen to me, Louis, and then, my dear, for ever hold your peace. If
the Lord, or whoever it is that's responsible for babies, had meant them
to make women invalids, they'd never have been invented at all. Because
there's no real room in the world for invalids. They'd have been grown
on bushes, or produced by budding, wouldn't they? So just you forget it!
The baby is my affair. It's nothing to do with you, and I positively
refuse to be fussed over. I call it indecent to talk about ill-health.
It's the one thing in life I'd put covers on and hide up. You must just
think you've been to a factory and ordered a baby, and they said, 'Yes,
sir--ready in six months from now, sir.' And then you walk away and call
again in six months!"

"Oh Lord!" he groaned, "why _did_ I marry a kid?"

"You can talk about him as much as you like," she went on calmly, "the
finished article. But I simply won't have you fussing about the details
of his manufacture, and all his trimmings. And that's final."

"But he's my child," protested Louis.

"Not yet! In six months' time, perhaps. But you've enough worries, real
worries, without making them up. There, dear heart, I don't mean to be
cross with you. But you're such an idiot, and I'm so sleepy."

They said good night once more, and she was falling asleep when he
pulled her hair gently. He was frowning, with deep lines on his
forehead.

"But look here, old lady. If we're going right away from everywhere
without any home, where's the child going to be born?"

"On the battlefield," she murmured sleepily.

He groaned, and once more his impatient twistings snatched the blanket
away.

"Oh damn the Keltic imagination! Why can't you g