thers do it, not my children, not my little girls!--It is
curious, but that is how we always think of them. When they are grown
they are often uncongenial. My daughter Ruth does not love me deeply,
nor am I greatly drawn to her now, as an individual, a
personality,--but Ruth was such a dear baby! I can't bear to have her
suffer."

Oliver started to protest, hesitated, bit his lip, and subsided. After
all, did he dare say that his wife would never {18} suffer? The woman
opposite looked at him with hostile, accusing eyes, as if he
incarnated in his youthful person all the futile masculinity in the
world.

"Do you think a woman who has suffered willingly gives her children
over to the same fate?" she demanded passionately. "I wish I could
make you see it for five minutes as I see it, you, young, careless,
foolish. Why, you know nothing,--nothing! Listen to me. The woman who
marries gives up everything: or at least jeopardizes everything: her
youth, her health, her life perhaps, certainly her individuality. She
acquires the permanent possibility of self-sacrifice. She does it
gladly, but she does not know what she is doing. In return, is it too
much to ask that she be assured a roof over her head, food to her
mouth, clothes to her body? How many men marry {19} without being sure
that they have even so much to offer? You yourself, of what are you
sure? Is your arm strong? Is your heart loyal? Can you shelter her
soul as well as her body? I know your father has money. Perhaps you
can care for her creature needs, but that is n't all. For some women
life is one long affront, one slow humiliation. How do I know you are
not like that?"

"Because I'm not, that's all!" said Oliver Pickersgill abruptly,
getting to his feet.

He felt badgered, baited, indignant, yet he could not tell this frail,
excited woman what he thought. There were things one did n't say,
although Mrs. Lannithorne seemed to ignore the fact. She went on
ignoring it.

"I know what you are thinking," she said, "that I would regard these
matters differently if I had married {20} another man. That is not
wholly true. It is because Peter Lannithorne was a good man at heart,
and tried to play the man's part as well as he knew how, and because
it was partly my own fault that he failed so miserably, that I have
thought of it all so much. And the end of all my thinking is that I
don't want my daughters to marry."

Oliver was white now, and a little unsteady. He w