Can you preserve leading and trailing whitespace in XML?

Dim xml: Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
xml.async = False
xml.loadxml "<xml>1 2</xml>"
wscript.echo len(xml.documentelement.text)

Dim xml: Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
xml.async = False
xml.loadxml "<xml> 2</xml>"
wscript.echo len(xml.documentelement.text)

<xml> 2</xml>

Dim xml As MSXML2.DOMDocument
Private Sub Form_Load()
Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
xml.async = False
xml.loadxml "<xml> 2</xml>"
Dim n
n = Len(xml.documentelement.selectSingleNode("text()").nodeValue)
wscript.echo Len(n)
End Sub

wscript.echo Len(n)

<xml><![CDATA[ 2]]></xml>

% ./whitespace "<foo> </foo>"
Length of " " is 1

% ./whitespace "<foo> 2</foo>"
Length of " 2" is 2

% ./whitespace "<foo>1 2</foo>"
Length of "1 2" is 3

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <libxml/parser.h>

int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    char           *xml;
    xmlDoc         *doc;
    xmlNode        *first_child, *node;
    if (argc < 2) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s XML-stringn", argv[0]);
        return 1;
    }
    xml = argv[1];
    doc = xmlReadMemory(xml, strlen(xml), "my data", NULL, 0);
    first_child = doc->children;
    first_child = first_child->children;        /* Skip the root */
    for (node = first_child; node; node = node->next) {
        if (node->type == XML_TEXT_NODE) {
            fprintf(stdout, "Length of "%s" is %in", (char *) node->content,
                    strlen((char *) node->content));
        }
    }
    return 0;
}