"Well, I'm damned!" he cried. He got an impression of her as a captive
balloon that had dragged loose its grapnel, and was being tugged at by
currents far above the earth, where the air was heavy and motionless. He
gripped her hand still tighter.
"Look here, young person, you sit down here and tell me all you mean,"
he said. She stared at him. He suddenly looked much more responsible. It
was the doctor in him suddenly awakened to new life. He had not felt
the birth struggles of the lover or the father yet.
"But you're not ill and tired like women are. I can't believe it," he
objected, frowning with a sort of diagnostic eye upon her.
"Why should I be?" she said, laughing and rumpling his hair which was
very straight and neat and made him look too elderly for her wakened
mood of ecstasy. "It's too splendid! It's a funny thing, I've never
thought of having babies before. I've always been a Knight, you know.
And knights don't have babies. Oh Louis, wouldn't they look funny,
riding out to battle with babies on a pillion behind them? Fancy
Parsifal with a baby! Or St. George! Yet why shouldn't they have them?
And why shouldn't they go to battle? It would be good training for them,
wouldn't it? They're so soft."
It was impossible for him to stop her. For the first time in her life
her tongue was loosened; she talked floods of nonsense, happy, enchanted
nonsense.
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