She nestled a little closer to him, and put her hand about his neck. He stooped and kissed it, and repeated his question.
"Unwilling? No; how could I be? I never dreaded maternity except when--and that lasted such a little while. I do not dread it now. It seems to me it would be a blessed thing for us. But, Adam, Adam, tell me, for I have sat here all day asking myself, whether it is a blessed thing to be born, or a penalty that others pay."
"I think it would be a blessing to be your son," he said steadily.
"And I think it would be a benediction to be yours," she answered; "but he would not be yours nor mine, but ours, plus everything in the past, verily heir of all the ages, and the ages were full of pain and sorrow. Oh," she said passionately, "could you and I who love him so, this son who is only our wish, could you and I who know the weight of this weary world, bind it upon the shoulders of our baby boy, and send him staggering down the centuries, the new Atlas of this old earth?"
They sat in silence for a long time. Then Adam said slowly, "I don't know, dearest; but I do know that you are tired and hungry, and I am going to take you home."
They rose and disappeared through the gateway together.
Love gives us a sort of religion of our own; we respect another life in ourselves.
Robin was shelling peas. Adam was reading her the story of their deluge. He paused, dissatisfied, and said impatiently,--
"I have not described it at all. I have said all I had to say in less than a thousand words; one would think such a scene deserved a hundred thousand."
Robin smiled her little inscrutable smile. "I think you have done it very well. It isn't intended to be scientific. You haven't told all the strata that were turned skyward for a moment when that crevasse opened between us and the town. You will find, if you turn to the first chapter of Genesis, that there is very little detail; but I am sure that the one line, 'He made the stars also,' is as eloquent as a treatise on the nebular theory. If you were learned in geology and astronomy and so on, you would load it down with an avalanche of scientific hypotheses, about which you would really know nothing, except by deduction, and over which future scientists would wrangle, part of them making you a god, and the rest proving you a fool. Be content to 'climb where Moses stood,' and produce literature."