Osborn was led, dazzled, into labyrinthine shops; he stood with Marie before long counters, while she inspected fine fabrics and, drawing off her glove, felt them critically with her fine hand.  He watched her eagerly and devotedly, as if he read the concentration of her thoughts, and he imagined the thoughts to be these: 

“Is this soft enough for him?  Is this delicate enough for my baby’s body?  Nothing harsh shall touch my darling; he must have the best, and the best is not good enough for him.  We will buy the most beautiful things in the world for my son.”

And she ordered the lengths in a voice which cooed; she bought lawn and flannel, and great skeins of wool, and lace fit for fairies; and she sought, as if trying to remember the persecution of the purse, for bargains in blue ribbon, but by that time Osborn was too exalted to permit bargaining.  He, too, was saying within himself: 

“Shan’t my boy have the best?  When he’s little and weak shan’t I win it for him?  And when he’s grown and strong, won’t he win it for himself, by Jove!”

He bought the blue ribbon.

They had spent one of the two pounds, and there seemed very little for it, of those fine things fit for a baby; but Marie stopped short after the spending of that sum.  “It’s enough to begin on,” she urged; “when I’ve finished with that I’ll get more.”  And she whispered, when the attendant’s back was turned:  “I shall squeeze it out of the thirty shillings all right, Osborn.  I shall put by every week.”

“Then,” Osborn replied in the same sotto voce, “if you won’t spend more for your baby, you darling, you’ll be taken out to dinner, because I love you so; and you’re to have a good time and be happy.  I’m to keep you cheerful.”

They chose one of the smallest West End restaurants, where they spent what Marie called a dream of an evening.  Her languors evaporated in that subtle air, her eyes brightened, her cheeks glowed; she could face right into the teeth of the coming storm, and do no more than laugh at it.  How good it was to be alive, and how alive she was!  She had two lives.  She was that most vital of all creatures, the expectant mother.  She felt vaguely as if God had granted to her a great and new power.

The next morning the sensation of power had vanished.  She was only a tired and nervous girl with a nasty feeling of nausea on her tongue.  Once more Osborn brought her tea, and she sipped it leaning back on her pillow; as she stretched out an arm for it she caught sight of her face in the glass and sank back again.  It was so tired and fretted, and the freshness of her skin seemed lost.  How she wished she need not get up!  She dreaded the day with its small and insistent exactions.

She was conscious of a fierce irritation with petty things.

Osborn could hardly eat breakfast himself when he saw how sick and sorry she was; he watched her efforts to eat a piece of dry toast and tried to comfort.