Long afterward she remembered that this conversation marked a certain change in her life; it was never quite glad, confident morning again, although for many months no definite element seemed altered.  Alice and old Mrs. Gregory had told her, and all the world agreed, that the coming of her child would draw her husband and herself more closely together, but, as Rachael expressed it to herself, it was if she alone moved—­moved infinitely nearer to her husband truly, came to depend upon him, to need him as she had never needed him in her life before.  But there was always the feeling that Warren had not moved.  He stood where he had always been, an eager sympathizer in these new and intense experiences, but untouched and unaltered himself.  For her pain, for her responsibility, for her physical limitations, he had the most intense tenderness and pity, but the fact remained that he might sleep through the nights, enjoy his meals, and play with his baby, when the mood decreed, untroubled by personal handicap.

Rachael, like all women, thought of these things seriously during the first year of her child’s life, and in February, when Jimmy was beginning to utter his first delicious, stammering monosyllables, it was with great gravity that she realized that motherhood was approaching her again, that at Thanksgiving she would have a second child.  She was wretchedly languid and ill during the entire spring, and found her mother-in-law’s and Alice Valentine’s calm acceptance of the situation bewildering and discouraging.

“My dear, I don’t eat a meal in comfort, the entire time!” Alice said cheerfully.  “I mind that more than any other phase!”

“But I am such a broken reed!” Rachael smiled ruefully.  “I have no energy!”

The older woman laughed.

“I know, my dear—­haven’t I been through it all?  Just don’t worry, and spare Greg what you can—­”

Rachael could do neither.  She wanted Warren every minute, and she wanted nobody else.  Her favorite hours were when she lay on the couch, near the fire, playing with his free hand, while he read to her or talked to her.  She wanted to hear, over and over again, that he loved no one else; and sometimes she declined invitations without even consulting him, “because we’re happier by our own fire than anywhere else, aren’t we, dearest?” “Don’t tell me about your stupid operations!” she would smile at him, “talk about—­us!”

She went over and over the details of her old life with a certain morbid satisfaction in his constant reassurance.  Her marriage had not been the cause of Clarence’s suicide, nor of Billy’s elopement; she had done her share for them both, more than her share!

Summer came, and she and the baby were comfortably established at Home Dunes.  Warren came when he could, perhaps twice a month, and usually without warning.  If he promised her the week-ends, she felt aggrieved to have him miss one, so he wired her every day, and sent her books and fruit, letters and magazines every week, and came at irregular intervals.  Alice and George Valentine and their children, her garden, her baby, and the ocean she loved so well must fill this summer for Rachael.