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the first time he had heard about it, a youngster playing with the fisherboys of this Mediterranean

coast, helping them pull strange creatures out of the sea and hearing them talk about the "facts

of life." It seemed exactly as incredible to him at this moment, when he knew that it was going

on in a room not far away, the victim his beautiful young playmate whom he had come to love

so deeply. His too vivid imagination was occupied with the bloody details, and he would clench

his hands until the knuckles were white. His protest against nature mounted to a clamor. He

thought: "Any way but this! Anything that's decent and sensible!" He addressed his ancient

mother, asking why she hadn't stuck to the method of the egg, which seemed to work so well with

birds and snakes and lizards and fishes? But these so-called "warm-blooded creatures," that had

so much blood and spilled it so easily!

II

Lanny knew that Irma didn't share these feelings. Irma was a "sensible woman," not troubled

with excess of imagination. She had said many times: "Don't worry. I'll be all right. It doesn't

last forever." Everybody agreed that this young Juno was made for motherhood; she had ridden

horseback, swum, played tennis, and had a vigorous body. She hadn't turned pale when she

crossed the threshold of this hospital, or even when she heard the cries of another woman.

Things always went all right with Irma Barnes, and she had told Lanny to go home and play

the piano and forget her; but here he sat, and thought about the details which he had read in an

encyclopedia article entitled "Obstetrics." From boyhood he had had the habit of looking up

things in that dependable work; but, damn it all, the article gave an undue proportion of space

to "breech presentations" and other variations from the normal, and Lanny might just as well

have been in the delivery-room. He would have liked to go there, but that would have been

considered an extreme variation from the normal in this land of rigid conventions.

So he sat in the little reception-room, and now and then the perspiration would start on his

forehead, even though it was a cool spring day on the Riviera. He was glad that he had the

room to himself; at times, when somebody came through, he would lower his eyes to his book

and pretend to be absorbed. But if it was one of the nurses, he couldn't keep from stealing a

glance, hoping that it was the nurse and the moment. The woman would smile; the conventions

permitted her to smile at a handsome young gentleman, but did not permit her to go into

obstetrical details. "Tout va bien, monsieur. Soyez tranquille." In such places the wheel of life

revolves on schedule; those who tend the machinery acquire a professional attitude, their phrases

become standardized, and you have mass production of politeness as well as of babies.

III

Lanny Budd was summoned to the telephone. It was Pietro Corsatti, Italian-born American

who represented a New York newspaper in Rome and was having a vacation on the Riviera. He

had once done Lanny a favor, and now had been promised one in return. "Pete" was to have the

news the moment it happened; but it refused to happen, and maybe wasn't going to happen. "I

know how you feel," said the correspondent, sympathetically. "I've been through it."

"It's been four hours!" exclaimed the outraged young husband.

"It may be four more, and it may be twenty-four. Don't take it too hard. It's happened a lot of

times." The well-known cynicism of the journalist.

Lanny returned to his seat, thinking about an Italian-American with a strong Brooklyn accent

who had pushed his way to an important newspaper position, and had so many funny stories

to tell about the regime fascista and its leaders, whom, oddly enough, he called "wops." One of

his best stories was about how he had become the guide, philosopher, and friend of a New York

"glamour girl" who had got herself engaged to a fascinating aristocrat in Rome and had then made

the discovery that he was living with the ballerina of the opera and had no idea of giving her up.

The American girl had broken down and wept in Pete's presence, asking him what to do, and

he had told her: "Take a plane and fly straight to Lanny Budd, and ask him to marry you in

spite of the fact that you are too rich!"

It is tough luck when a journalist cannot publish his best story. Pete hadn't been asked not to,

but, all the same, he hadn't, so now Lanny was his friend for life, and would go out of his way

to give him a break whenever he could. They talked as pals, and Lanny didn't mind telling

what only a few of his friends knew, that Irma had done exactly what Pete had said, and she and

Lanny had been married on the day she had found him in London. As the Brooklyn dialect had

it, they had "gone right to it," and here was the result nine months later: Lanny sitting in a

reception-room of an hospice de la maternité, awaiting the arrival of Sir Stork, the blessed