what some of the
experiments had been--some of her attempts to break into the life he
kept locked away from her and carry off a share of it for herself.

"I was angry at first when I found you keeping me out," she said, "angry
and hurt. I used to cry about it. And then I saw it wasn't your fault.
That's how I discovered friendship had to be earned."

But her power to maintain that attitude of grave detachment was about
spent. The passion mounted in her voice and in her eyes as she went on.

"You thought it was because of my condition, as you called it, that my
mind had got full of wild ideas;--the wild idea that I wasn't really and
truly your wife at all, but only your mistress, and that I was pulling
you down from something free and fine that you had been, to something
that you despised yourself for being and had to try to deny you were.
Those were the obsessions of a pregnant woman, you thought--something
she was to be soothed and coddled into forgetting. You were wrong about
that, Roddy.

"I did have an obsession, but it wasn't the thing you thought. It was an
obsession that kept me quiet, and contented and happy, and willing to
wait in spite of everything. The obsession was that none of those things
mattered because a big miracle was coming that was going to change it
all. I was going to have a job at last--a job that was just as real as
yours--the job of being a mother."

Her voice broke in a fierce sharp little laugh over the word, but she
got it back in control again.

"I was going to have a baby to feed out of my own body, to keep alive
with my own care. There was going to be responsibility and hard work,
things that demanded courage and endurance and sacrifice. I could earn
your friendship with that, I said. That was the real obsession, Roddy,
and it never really died until to-night. Because of course I have kept
on hoping, even after I might have seen how it was. But the babies'
lives aren't to be jeopardized to gratify my whims. Well, I suppose I
can't complain. It's over, that's the main thing.

"And now, here I am perfectly normal and well again--as good as ever.
I've kept my looks--oh, my hair and my complexion and my figure. I could
wear pretty clothes again and start going out to things now that the
season's begun, just as I did a year ago. People would admire me, and
you'd be pleased, and you'd love me as much as ever, and it would all be
like the paradise it was last year, except for one thing.