e wasted your talents, Carley. Having money, and spending it, living
for pleasure, you have not realized your powers.... Now, don't look
hurt. I'm not censuring you, It's just the way of modern life. And most
of your friends have been more careless, thoughtless, useless than you.
The aim of their existence is to be comfortable, free from work, worry,
pain. They want pleasure, luxury. And what a pity it is! The best of you
girls regard marriage as an escape, instead of responsibility. You don't
marry to get your shoulders square against the old wheel of American
progress--to help some man make good--to bring a troop of healthy
American kids into the world. You bare your shoulders to the gaze of the
multitude and like it best if you are strung with pearls."

"Glenn, you distress me when you talk like this," replied Carley,
soberly. "You did not use to talk so. It seems to me you are bitter
against women."

"Oh no, Carley! I am only sad," he said. "I only see where once I was
blind. American women are the finest on earth, but as a race, if they
don't change, they're doomed to extinction."

"How can you say such things?" demanded Carley, with spirit.

"I say them because they are true. Carley, on the level now, tell me how
many of your immediate friends have children."

Put to a test, Carley rapidly went over in mind her circle of friends,
with the result that she was somewhat shocked and amazed to realize how
few of them were even married, and how the babies of her acquaintance
were limited to three. It was not easy to admit this to Glenn.

"My dear," replied he, "if that does not show you the handwriting on the
wall, nothing ever will."

"A girl has to find a husband, doesn't she?" asked Carley, roused to
defense of her sex. "And if she's anybody she has to find one in her
set. Well, husbands are not plentiful. Marriage certainly is not the end
of existence these days. We have to get along somehow. The high cost of
living is no inconsderable factor today. Do you know that most of the
better-class apartment houses in New York will not take children? Women
are not all to blame. Take the speed mania. Men must have automobiles.
I know one girl who wanted a baby, but her husband wanted a car. They
couldn't afford both."

"Carley, I'm not blaming women more than men," returned Glenn. "I don't
know that I blame them as a class. But in my own mind I have worked it
all out. Every man or woman who is genuinely American shou