Winton got up, too.  Gyp saw the girl’s eyes, lighting on his rigid hand, grow round and rounder; and from her, walking past the side of the house, the careful voice floated back: 

“Oh, I do hope—­” But what, could not be heard.

Sinking back in her chair, Gyp sat motionless.  Bees were murmurous among her flowers, pigeons murmurous among the trees; the sunlight warmed her knees, and her stretched-out feet through the openwork of her stockings.  The maid’s laughter, the delicious growling of the puppies at play in the kitchen came drifting down the garden, with the distant cry of a milkman up the road.  All was very peaceful.  But in her heart were such curious, baffled emotions, such strange, tangled feelings.  This moment of enlightenment regarding the measure of her husband’s frankness came close on the heels of the moment fate had chosen for another revelation, for clinching within her a fear felt for weeks past.  She had said to Winton that she did not want to have a child.  In those conscious that their birth has caused death or even too great suffering, there is sometimes this hostile instinct.  She had not even the consolation that Fiorsen wanted children; she knew that he did not.  And now she was sure one was coming.  But it was more than that.  She had not reached, and knew she could not reach, that point of spirit-union which alone makes marriage sacred, and the sacrifices demanded by motherhood a joy.  She was fairly caught in the web of her foolish and presumptuous mistake!  So few months of marriage—­and so sure that it was a failure, so hopeless for the future!  In the light of this new certainty, it was terrifying.  A hard, natural fact is needed to bring a yearning and bewildered spirit to knowledge of the truth.  Disillusionment is not welcome to a woman’s heart; the less welcome when it is disillusionment with self as much as with another.  Her great dedication—­her scheme of life!  She had been going to—­what?—­save Fiorsen from himself!  It was laughable.  She had only lost herself.  Already she felt in prison, and by a child would be all the more bound.  To some women, the knowledge that a thing must be brings assuagement of the nerves.  Gyp was the opposite of those.  To force her was the way to stiver up every contrary emotion.  She might will herself to acquiesce, but—­one cannot change one’s nature.

And so, while the pigeons cooed and the sunlight warmed her feet, she spent the bitterest moments of her life—­so far.  Pride came to her help.  She had made a miserable mess of it, but no one must know—­certainly not her father, who had warned her so desperately!  She had made her bed, and she would have to lie on it.

When Winton came back, he found her smiling, and said: 

“I don’t see the fascination, Gyp.”

“Don’t you think her face really rather perfect?”

“Common.”

“Yes; but that drops off when she’s dancing.”