Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/305

 'Think how terrible the shock would be if your child should grow up and find these stories, and realize that her mother wrote them.'

Lanice moved slightly within his arms. At some future day she might care, but now she did not. Why didn't he tell her to destroy her files of 'Hearth and Home'? Those were the stories that disgraced her.

'But they've never been published; she'll never find them.'

'Oh, my dear. This afternoon, at your desk, I had a premonition of this child, your daughter with all your loveliness, a little girl of fifteen, coming as I did to your desk, finding these stories and reading them.'

'That was why they shocked you so, my dear. You read them, not from your point of view, but from that of a fifteen-year-old child. Truly, Sears, is that a fair basis for literature?'

'I know, but your daughter...'

He amazed her sometimes with his absorption in this child which, in due time, she should bear him. It was already a person to him, and from the first he had been sure of its sex. Either his enslavement to his wife made him desire to see her reincarnate in the next generation, or, being a man of habit, he expected first a daughter and then a son because this had been Prunella's conduct.

'What do you want me to do, Sears?'

'Nothing, my love, but I hope that you will wish to...'

Her face was pressed against his ear, and her eyes