So soon as she could speak after her accident, she told them that they must not write to him and tell him of it.

She also made them promise that they would give him no news of her at all, save that she was well.

They could not refuse to promise; they felt she had the right to demand much more than that.

They had begun to care for her for herself, and when the months went by, and one day there was a hush about her room, and anxiety, and then relief, in the faces of all, they came to care for her still more for the sake of her child.
As the weeks passed, the fair-haired child grew more and more like his father; but if Lali thought of her husband they never knew it by anything she said, for she would not speak of him.

She also made them promise that they would not write to him of the child's birth.