Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/150

140 Maud thought she could only be speaking of one thing—namely, her childlessness.

"Ah yes, of course, dear, I understand," she said. "But when you have one child, which pray God you may, you will want another. And then you will want to see them grow up."

Lucia had not been thinking of this at all; all that was in her mind was the little clouds that have been spoken of. But she picked up her cue instantaneously.

"Yes, of course, there is that big want," she said; "but even apart from that it is nice to know that the little wants are not dimmed or diminished. Oh, Maud, delightful as all our wanderings have been, it is nice to settle down. I want—oh, I want to squeeze every ounce out of life. I want everything, all the arts, all the witty and beautiful things of the world, to yield their uttermost. And the amazing and glorious thing is that they never can. Even while you suck one orange another is ripening. Worldly? I don't think it is worldly. It is to make the best possible out of this world, to use all that is given us."

Maud laughed.

"Anyhow, you haven't changed in the least," she said. "You are still quite deliciously rapacious."

Here again was neat phrasing. Lucia just noted it, but her egotism for the time was in excelsis, and she went on.

"That is what dear Edgar does not quite understand," she said. "He is not insatiable as I am. He does not want all there is. I told him so the other night, and it rather puzzled him. I want him to get me the Pleiades to wear in my hair; I want to wear the moon as a pendant round my neck; I want Saturn and Jupiter to shine in my girdle; I want Venus. But I was out of breath, and so I told him I would be Venus myself. And there is so little time; the years pass so quickly; since I married two have already gone, and I haven't begun. I know I have all the time there is, but they ought to have made much more. The days became weeks, and the weeks months, and there are only twelve months in a year, and even if I live to be eighty I have only fifty-seven years more. And by then I shall be old and ugly, and probably deaf, but I hope not dumb, and all the sap will have run out of my life, and I shall be raddled in the face and rheumatic in the joints. Oh, it's damnable! Have some more tea."

Lucia laughed, then stopped abruptly.

"I don't know why I laugh," she said. "It is all serious