THE BIRTHPLACE
If it was all in the air—all in their "eye," as the vulgar might say—that He had been born in the Birthroom, where was the value of the sixpences they took? where the equivalent they had engaged to supply? "Oh dear, yes—just about here;" and she must tap the place with her foot. "Altered? Oh dear, no—save in a few trifling particulars; you see the place—and isn't that just the charm of it?—quite as He saw it. Very poor and homely, no doubt; but that's just what's so wonderful." He didn't want to hear her, and yet he didn't want to give her her head; he didn't want to make difficulties or to snatch the bread from her mouth. But he must none the less give her a warning before they had gone too far. That was the way, one evening in June, he put it to her; the affluence, with the finest weather, having lately been of the largest, and the crowd, all day, fairly gorged with the story. "We mustn't, you know, go too far."
The odd thing was that she had now ceased to be even conscious of what troubled him—she was so launched in her own career. "Too far for what?"
"To save our immortal souls. We mustn't, love, tell too many lies."
She looked at him with dire reproach. "Ah now, are you going to begin again?"
"I never have begun; I haven't wanted to worry you. But, you know, we don't know anything about it." And then as she stared, flushing: "About His having been born up there. About anything, really. Not the least little scrap that would weigh, in any other connection, as evidence. So don't rub it in so."
"Rub it in how?"
"That He was born———" But at sight of her face he only sighed. "Oh dear, oh dear!"
"Don't you think," she replied cuttingly, "that He was born anywhere?"
He hesitated—it was such an edifice to shake. "Well,
271
