Explore "Adam's Breed" by Radclyffe Hall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A year passed, then another. Maddalena was still childless, and her heart was heavy with dread. She knew now that even her love for Gian-Luca could not make up for the longing that was in her. She never confided her fears to her husband, held back by a painful pride; he did not particularly want her child, he had said that children cost money. Yet since she had no little son to love, she must perforce love Gian-Luca for two, so Maddalena loved him for the man that was in him, but also for the child that is in every man -- she loved him as a wife and as a mother. There had always been this dual element in her love, but now something new had begun to creep in -- a kind of grave desperation. Gian-Luca would sometimes force his mind from the Doric in order to consider her more closely; the gravity of her love had begun to oppress him, it made him feel in a vague, uneasy way that his wife was no longer happy.
"What is the matter? " he would think to himself; "am I not perfectly faithful to this woman? Do I not give her all?"