nderful things that weren't poetry
and the joy of living at all. But I was far too young to understand
that just because you did belong to people like that, when you married
a man you would sink your life in his. That seems to me now to be
the strongest thing about you. I have a feeling that inside you
somewhere your character stands like a rock upon which father's ideas
could beat forever without changing it. But you never let that
character make you into a force separate from him. You have made his
home perfect in every detail, but outside of it you are just his wife.
Tell me, does that really satisfy you?"

Fabia's smile grew into a laugh. "I seem very old-fashioned to you,
do I not, dear child? It is not because of my age, either, for plenty
of middle-aged women agree with you. It is quite in the air, isn't
it, the independence of women, their right to choose their own paths?
I was invited to a reading of the _Lysistrata_ the other day, and
actually one woman said afterwards that she believed Aristophanes
was only foreseeing a time when women would take part in the
government! She was laughed down for that, but most of the others
agreed that the whole progress of society since Aristophanes's time
lay in the emancipation of women from the confines of the home and
from intellectual servility. I, too, believe in mental freedom, but
you all insist a great deal upon the rights involved in being
individuals. I have never been able to see what you gain by that.
My husband is a citizen of Rome. To be called his wife is my proudest
title. It makes no difference to the state what I am or do of myself.
I live to the state only through him."

The younger woman had begun to speak almost before Fabia had finished,
but the conversation was interrupted by the nurse coming for the
child. Perilla went back to the house with them, confessing, with
a laugh, that an hour with her boy at bed-time was more important
than trying to change her perfect mother. It was not yet time to dress
for the birthday dinner, which was to crown the day, and Fabia
lingered on in the garden to watch the gathering rose in the late
afternoon sky above the tree-tops. An enchanted sense of happiness
came to her in the silence of the hour. She did not agree with her
husband that happiness was the main object of life, but she was very
grateful to the gods who had allowed her to be happy ever since she
was a little girl, left to the care of a devoted uncle by p