Frances sat by the open window and looked out into the garden where Anthony and Norris played, quietly yet fiercely, against Vereker and Parsons.  Frances loved the smell of fresh grass that the balls and the men’s feet struck from the lawn; she loved the men’s voices subdued to Nicky’s sleep, and the sound of their padding feet, the thud of the balls on the turf, the smacking and thwacking of the rackets.  She loved every movement of Anthony’s handsome, energetic body; she loved the quick, supple bodies of the young men, the tense poise and earnest activity of their adolescence.  But it was not Vereker or Parsons or Norris that she loved or that she saw.  It was Michael, Nicholas and John whose adolescence was foreshadowed in those athletic forms wearing white flannels; Michael, Nicky and John, in white flannels, playing fiercely.  When young Vereker drew himself to his full height, when his young body showed lean and slender as he raised his arms for his smashing service, it was not young Vereker, but Michael, serious and beautiful.  When young Parsons leaped high into the air and thus returned Anthony’s facetious sky-scraper on the volley, that was Nicky.  When young Norris turned and ran at the top of his speed, and overtook the ball on its rebound from the base line where young Vereker had planted it, when, as by a miracle, he sent it backwards over his own head, paralysing Vereker and Parsons with sheer astonishment, that was John.

* * * * *

Her vision passed.  She was leaning over Nicky now, Nicky so small in the big bed.  Nicky had moaned.

“Does it count if I make that little noise, Mummy?  It sort of lets the pain out.”

“No, my lamb, it doesn’t count.  Is the pain very bad?”

“Yes, Mummy, awful.  It’s going faster and faster.  And it bizzes.  And when it doesn’t bizz, it thumps.”  He paused—­“I think—­p’raps—­I could bear it better if I sat on your knee.”

Frances thought she could bear it better too.  It would be good for Nicky that he should grow into beautiful adolescence and a perfect manhood; but it was better for her that he should be a baby still, that she should have him on her knee and hold him close to her; that she should feel his adorable body press quivering against her body, and the heat of his earache penetrating her cool flesh.  For now she was lost to herself and utterly absorbed in Nicky.  And her agony became a sort of ecstasy, as if, actually, she bore his pain.

It was Anthony who could not stand it.  Anthony had come in on his way to his dressing-room.  As he looked at Nicky his handsome, hawk-like face was drawn with a dreadful, yearning, ineffectual pity.  Frances had discovered that her husband could both be and look pathetic.  He had wanted her to be sorry for him and she was sorry for him, because his male pity was all agony; there was no ecstasy in it of any sort at all.  Nicky was far more her flesh and blood than he was Anthony’s.