me of other men to whom this thing
really happened? Did it crush them all like _this_? How did they keep
up hope, decency, honor? How did they preserve their interest in the
game and make life worth living afterward? Already he felt heavy upon
his heart a presentiment of airless days, of tortured nights. The
loneliness of it! No tenderness anywhere in life for him? No love?
Then, what use to live? Humanity? Wasn't he humanity?

{145}

Nevertheless, when he spoke, he only said, "And Marvel? Is Marvel
called to be motherless?"

Clarissa's serene face clouded faintly. The question of Marvel did,
indeed, puzzle even her facility. And yet she had light on that
problem also.

"If I really prove to be any good,--and I think I shall be a helper
in a movement that is going to revolutionize the earth,"--Clarissa
said gravely, "there are others to consider besides Marvel. It--why,
it _may_ be, Paul that my duty is to the race! I'm not an especially
good mother for Marvel at her present age--the young-animal stage of
her development. All a child under twelve years needs is to be
properly fed, and clothed, and taught the elementary things. It has
all been standardized, and is a matter for experts, anyhow. Your
sister Josephine {146} would be a better mother for her for the next
few years than I. Why should I do what others can do better? When
Marvel begins to _think_, it will be different. Then she will need my
influence. I should like to let you have her for the next few years,
and have her come to me when she is fifteen or sixteen. How would that
suit you, Paul?"

Her husband moved his shoulders imperceptibly, but said nothing. The
thing had passed the point where rational speech, as he conceived it,
was in place. If Clarissa did not see the shallowness, the sheer
indecency, of discarding one's human relations as if they were old
clothes, he could not make her see it. Was it only half an hour ago
that he had come down the street in the spring sunshine, under the
budding elms, bringing Clarissa a bunch of {147} daffodils and
thinking of making a garden, and of all the dear, homely April tasks?

Clarissa assumed that his silence was one of acquiescence. Sooner or
later people always acquiesced.

"It is really sweet of you to take it like this, Paul," she said
warmly. "I never have understood why people should n't be thoroughly
rational about these matters. There's no occasion for bitterness. I
should like to have people sa