The cloakroom woman stood in a haze of retrospect, her crumbling face, on which lay two little islands of hard, dry rouge.

Kitty! cried Maudie. You left us delib’ately. It wasn’t nice of you, Kitty.

She spoke with great concentration, though without malice. It was too late for malice.

The lady hasn’t been well, the cloakroom woman said.

Nobody’s well! cried Maudie.

Kitty looked at her, or this Mrs Standish, with her freshly acquired importance, looked at all the Maudie Westmacotts, and decided in one swoop that she disliked her sex. All the artifices, telephone and otherwise, were only coatings to this dislike. Now she sat back. She could afford to. If only it had happened before, if only she had had the courage to admit. Courage was now less abstract, she felt.

I’m going to have a child, Maudie, she said.

She waited keenly for the reaction.

Christmas! said Maudie. It’s too late for practical jokes.

Maudie drooped, the plumes sweeping in a tired arc in what was now the wrong direction. Her face was full of shadows, bluish shadows, and between her breasts. She looked at Kitty, dully, out of a great distance, disliking her also perhaps, if it came to the truth.

Where is Willy ? asked Mrs Standish. We must go.

Willy? Willy’s blotto. Willy has passed out, said Maudie.

Going home, it was even a longer way, with Willy a collapsed body which breathed hard. There was dew in the air now, in a sleepy, distant countryside. Catherine Standish was exhausted but content, as she sat there in the importance of having a child. Whether Willy knew or not. It was more her business, anyway. She was glad of that. The child that she was making would remain hers, at least for a very long time. And she enjoyed this, her new possession. It was a safeguard, she felt unconsciously, against the expressionless malaise.

Willy was surprised and interested.

She sat up in bed sipping her tea that the maid had just brought.

Well, he said, and again: Well.

He could not accustom himself to the fact. He had the surprised, withdrawn look of a man persuading himself he was going to be a father. Sentimentally, it was momentous. This was something he had given her. It was his.

Kitty, he said, allowing his voice tenderness.

She offered him her cheek. She lay back in bed, enjoying the situation.

Of course, it’ll be a long time, she said, sounding almost bored.

Yes, he said. Of course.

He went off into the bathroom, wondering still.

She began to have a great deal of time on her hands. The days when Willy, after the first burst of attentiveness, stayed down at the studio, he was painting hard, and then he was working at an art school, painting from the life, because he needed this, he said. He also engaged models. Sometimes he told her things they had said, the funny or stupid things. And she smiled indulgently, as if she were humouring a child. The child that she was carrying made her feel older than Willy, an adjustment she didn’t altogether resent, because of the superiority it gave. And now the games they had played seemed more than childish. She even began to discuss their financial position. Because she realized, through some stirring of responsibility allied to her physical condition, that there was such a thing as a financial state. But investments bored Willy, and didn’t interest her very much more. To the end of her life, she inclined to trust to the moment, to hold out her plate and trust that someone would fill it. So far it had worked.