"If you love me so much, you should be unselfish and think more of Baby."
"Must Baby always count above his Daddy?"
"Naturally he must be considered more, while he is so young and delicate."
"Where then do I come in?"
"You mustn't be jealous of your own child!" she cried reproachfully. "Think of his helplessness, his need of me!—Of course you need me, too," she said putting her palm over his mouth to stifle his eloquence on the subject of a husband's rights, "but then, there's a difference. You can manage without me, while he must not. A babe is a sacred trust to its mother."
"And when he grows older and is impressionable, there will be a mother's moral duty towards his soul to separate us. You and he at home, and I out here, alone! I know the jargon, having watched such comedies for years. Now it has come home to me. One hears that a child is a blessing from God.... I believe it is a blessing very much in disguise, for I see only the disguise at present."
"Why look so far ahead?" laughed Joyce, determined to mend his humour. "By the time he is old enough to become a 'moral' responsibility, you will probably be only too glad to get rid of me. I am such a worry as a wife."
"I wonder!" he ejaculated ruefully.
Joyce reminded him of the many week-ends he could spend at the bungalow, when they would contrive to have very happy times. "I shan't be so anxious with a doctor on the spot, so to speak; and shall be ever so much more of a wife," she promised, looking adorable in the ribbons and laces of her snowy night-dress, backed with befrilled pillows.
The prospect had compensations, he felt, but he found it hard to explain without incurring the imputation of selfishness, that, parted day after day from the light of her presence, deprived of the sight of her loveliness and the natural expression of his passion for her, he would assuredly ache unceasingly and pine himself sick. She would not understand, since she had little comprehension of the ways of mankind, so he could only sigh and capitulate.