How proud she was, what a lovely proud thing her young body!
And she loved him to put his hand on her ripe fullness, so that
he should thrill also with the stir and the quickening there. He
was afraid and silent, but she flung her arms round his neck
with proud, impudent joy.
The pains came on, and Oh--how she cried! She would have
him stay with her. And after her long cries she would look at
him, with tears in her eyes and a sobbing laugh on her face,
saying: "I don't mind it really."
It was bad enough. But to her it was never deathly. Even the
fierce, tearing pain was exhilarating. She screamed and
suffered, but was all the time curiously alive and vital. She
felt so powerfully alive and in the hands of such a masterly
force of life, that her bottom-most feeling was one of
exhilaration. She knew she was winning, winning, she was always
winning, with each onset of pain she was nearer to victory.
Probably he suffered more than she did. He was not shocked or
horrified. But he was screwed very tight in the vise of
suffering.
It was a girl. The second of silence on her face when they
said so showed him she was disappointed. And a great blazing
passion of resentment and protest sprang up in his heart. In
that moment he claimed the child.
But when the milk came, and the infant sucked her breast, she
seemed to be leaping with extravagant bliss.
"It sucks me, it sucks me, it likes me--oh, it loves
it!" she cried, holding the child to her breast with her two
hands covering it, passionately.
And in a few moments, as she became used to her bliss, she
looked at the youth with glowing, unseeing eyes, and said: "Anna Victrix."
He went away, trembling, and slept. To her, her pains were
the wound-smart of a victor, she was the prouder.
When she was well again she was very happy. She called the
baby Ursula. Both Anna and her husband felt they must have a
name that gave them private satisfaction. The baby was tawny
skinned, it had a curious downy skin, and wisps of bronze hair,
and the yellow grey eyes that wavered, and then became
golden-brown like the father's. So they called her Ursula
because of the picture of the saint.
It was a rather delicate baby at first, but soon it became
stronger, and was restless as a young eel. Anna was worn out
with the day-long wrestling with its young vigour.
As a little animal, she loved and adored it and was happy.
She loved her husband, she kissed his eyes and nose and mouth,
and made much of him, she said his limbs were beautiful, she was
fascinated by the physical form of him.