The world will never need to lose its heroes then, for there will never lack ardent and devoted women to contend for such crowns of motherhood." He stopped abruptly, for he had observed that Ida's face betrayed acute distress.
"Forgive me," he said.

"You do not like us to talk of this." "I think I do not," she replied, in a low voice, without looking up.

"It affects me very strangely to think about it much.

I would like to forget it if I could and feel that I am like other people." She had, in fact, shown a marked and increasing indisposition almost from the first to discuss the events of that wonderful night at Mrs.
Legrand's.

After having had the circumstances once fully explained to her, she had never since referred to them of her own accord.
She apparently had the shrinking which any person, and especially a woman, would naturally have from the idea of being regarded as something abnormal and uncanny, and mingled with this was, perhaps, a certain sacred shamefacedness, at the thought that this most intimate and vital mystery of her second birth had been witnessed and was the subject of curious speculations..