It had been quite perfect.  By that visit, and by his abstention from any later visit, he had induced in her just that mood of serenity and confidence which would be most shocked by the irruption of his passion.  The evening when it all happened she had been so utterly given up to happiness.  She had taken the most preposterously long time to put Richard to bed.  He had had a restless day, and had been so drowsy when she went to feed him in the evening that she had put him back in his cradle in his day clothes, but about half-past eight he had awakened and called her, and she found him very lively and roguish.  She had stripped him and then could not bear to put his night-clothes on, he looked so lovely lying naked in her lap.  He was not one of those babies who are pieces of flesh that slowly acquire animation by feeding and sleeping; from his birth he had seemed to be charged with the whole vitality of a man.  He was minute as a baby of three months is, he was helpless, he had not yet made the amazing discovery that his hand belonged to him, but she knew that when she held him she held a strong man.  This babyhood was the playful disguise in which he came into the world in order that they might get on easy terms with one another and be perfect companions.  Never would he be able to feel tyrannous because of his greater strength, for he would remember the time when she had lifted him in her weak arms, and that same memory would prevent her from ever being depressed into a sense of inferiority, so that they would ever move in the happy climate of a sense of equality.  And every moment of this journey towards that perfect relationship was going to be a delight.

She bent over him, enravished by the brilliant bloom of his creamy skin and the black blaze of his eyes, which had been black from birth, as hardly any children’s are; turned him over and kissed the delicate crook of his knees and the straight column of his spine and the little square wings of his shoulder-blades, and then she turned him back again and jeered at him because he wore the phlegmatic, pasha-like smile of an adored baby.  She became vexed with love for him, and longed to clasp him, to crush him as she knew she must not.  She put on his night-clothes, kissing him extravagantly and unsatedly, and when she finished he wailed and nuzzled to her breast.  “Oh, no, you greedy little thing,” she cried, for it was a quarter of an hour before he should have been fed again, but a wave of love passed through her and she took him to her.  They were fused, they were utterly content with one another.  He finished, smacking his lips like an old epicure.  “Oh, my darling love!” she cried, and put him back into the cot and ran downstairs.  If she stayed longer she would keep him awake with her kisses and play.  She was brightened and full of silent laughter, like a girl who escapes from her sweetheart.