At last, she said to herself, with a great leap of her soul. John, next to her, was still asleep; she muted her exultant thoughts for fear they would wake him. It was far too soon to tell him since of course she could not be sure. Yet there could hardly be any doubt. This swelling was one of the recognized signs. She well remembered the terror of waking up in her college bed on bright May mornings to find that her nipples hurt when her nightgown rubbed against them. At that time (she still frowned a little to think of it), she had fought with might and main not to know what was the matter with her. She must have bruised herself, she had kept insisting, during senior play rehearsals, in the fencing scene: she was Hamlet, naturally, and the girl who played Laertes had been clumsy with the foil. You were not pregnant, she had tried to believe, unless you threw up in the mornings. She had not thrown up and she had played Hamlet and graduated, without anyone’s knowing. But she had had to have a dangerous abortion, right after Commencement; the abortionist told her she had waited too long.
