"I hope I didn't wake you.
I knocked very, very gently."
"I haven't been asleep."
He went to one of the windows and threw open the shutter.
A flood of warm light streamed into the room.
"What is it?" she asked. "Why are you back so early?"
"The Sisters said that you weren't very well.
I thought I had better come and see what was the matter."
A flash of anger passed through her.
"What would you have said if it had been cholera?"
"If it had been you certainly couldn't have made your way home this morning."
She went to the dressing-table and passed the comb through her shingled hair. She wanted to gain time.
Then, sitting down, she lit a cigarette.
"I wasn't very well this morning and the Mother Superior thought I'd better come back here.
But I'm perfectly all right again.
I shall go to the convent as usual to-morrow."
"What was the matter with you?"
"Didn't they tell you?"
"No. The Mother Superior said that you must tell me yourself."
He did now what he did seldom; he looked her full in the face; his professional instincts were stronger than his personal.
She hesitated. Then she forced herself to meet his eyes.
"I'm going to have a baby," she said.
She was accustomed to his habit of meeting with silence a statement which you would naturally expect to evoke an exclamation, but never had it seemed to her more devastating.
He said nothing; he made no gesture; no movement on his face nor change of expression in his dark eyes indicated that he had heard.
She felt suddenly inclined to cry.
If a man loved his wife and his wife loved him, at such a moment they were drawn together by a poignant emotion.
The silence was intolerable and she broke it.
"I don't know why it never occurred to me before.
It was stupid of me, but… what with one thing and another…"
"How long have you … when do you expect to be confined?"
The words seemed to issue from his lips with difficulty.
She felt that his throat was as dry as hers.
It was a nuisance that her lips trembled so when she spoke; if he was not of stone it must excite his pity.
"I suppose I've been like this between two and three months."
"Am I the father?"
She gave a little gasp.
There was just a shadow of a tremor in his voice; it was dreadful that cold self-control of his which made the smallest token of emotion so shattering.
She did not know why she thought suddenly of an instrument she had been shown in Hong Kong upon which a needle oscillated a little and she had been told that this represented an earthquake a thousand miles away in which perhaps a thousand persons had lost their lives.
She looked at him.
He was ghastly pale.
She had seen that pallor on him once, twice before.
He was looking down, a little sideways.
"Well?"
She clasped her hands.
She knew that if she could say yes it would mean everything in the world to him. He would believe her, of course he would believe her, because he Wanted to; and then he would forgive.
She knew how deep was his tenderness and how ready he was, for all his shyness, to expend it.
She knew that he was not vindictive; he would forgive her if she could but give him an excuse to, an excuse that touched his heart, and he would forgive completely.
She could count on him never to throw the past in her teeth.
Cruel he might be, cold and morbid, but he was neither mean nor petty.
It would alter everything if she said yes.