“Ah, then,”—­a very remote expression came into her eyes,—­“then it would all be different.”

“All?”

“Yes.  Everything would be quite different then.”

“Not our relation to each other?”

“Yes, even that.  Perhaps that most of all.”

“I—­I hardly like to hear you say that,” he said, struggling against a perhaps stupid, or even hateful, feeling of depression mingled with something else.

“But wouldn’t it?  Think!”

“I don’t want that to change.  I should hate any change in that.”

“What we want, and what we hate, doesn’t affect what has to be.  And I expect at the end we shall be thankful for that.  But, Dion, yes, if what you say, I could give it all up.  Public singing!  What would it matter then?  I’m a woman, not a singer.  But perhaps it will never come.”

“Who knows?” he said.

And he sighed.

She turned towards him, leaned one hand on the stone and looked at him almost anxiously.

“What is the matter, Dion?”

“Why?  There is nothing the matter.”

“Would you rather we never had that in our lives?”

“A child?”

“Yes, a child.”

“I thought I longed for that,” he answered.

“Do you meant that you have changed and don’t long any more?”

“I suppose it’s like this.  When a man’s very happy, perfectly happy, he doesn’t—­perhaps he can’t—­want any change to come.  If you’re perfectly happy instinctively you almost fear any change.  Till to-day, till this very minute perhaps, I thought I wanted to have a child—­some day.  Perhaps I still do really, or perhaps I shall.  But—­you must forgive me, I can’t help it!—­this evening, sitting here, I don’t want anything to come between us.  It seems to me that even a child of ours would take some of you away from me.  Don’t you see that?”

She shook her head.

“That’s a man’s feeling.  I can’t share it.”

“But think—­all the attention you would have to give to a child, all the thoughts you would fasten on it, all the anxieties you’d have about it!”

“Well?”

“One only has a certain amount of time.  You’d have to take away a good deal, a great deal, of the time you can now give to me.  Oh, it sounds too beastly, I know!  Perhaps I scarcely mean it!  But surely you can see how a man who loves a woman very much might, without being the least bit unnatural, think, ’I’d like to keep every bit of her for myself.  I’d like to have her all to myself!’ I dare say this feeling will pass.  Remember, Rose, we’re only just married, and we’re in Greece, right away from every one.  Don’t think me morbidly jealous, or a beast.  I’m not.  I expect lots of men have felt as I do, perhaps even till the first child came.”

“Ah, then it would be all right,” she said.  “The natural things, the things nature intends, are always all right.”

“How blessedly sane and central you are!”