"Don't I want your children ?" "But not me." "How can you say so?
But we must be married to have children--" "Shall we be married, then?
I want you to have my children." He kissed her hand reverently.

She pondered sadly, watching him.
"We are too young," she said at length.
"Twenty-four and twenty-three--" "Not yet," she pleaded, as she rocked herself in distress.
"When you will," he said.
She bowed her head gravely.

The tone of hopelessness in which he said these things grieved her deeply.

It had always been a failure between them.

Tacitly, she acquiesced in what he felt.
And after a week of love he said to his mother suddenly one Sunday night, just as they were going to bed: "I shan't go so much to Miriam's, mother." She was surprised, but she would not ask him anything.
"You please yourself," she said.
So he went to bed.