eing the psychological moment was that Clara wanted
to join a party at Nice and did not have money enough to buy the
clothes which would make her going worth while. For there was a man
there--an American, a rich westerner--whom Clara's duty to society moved
her to marry.

That was Katie's indelicate deduction from Clara's delicate hints.

And Katie wanted Worth. It wasn't wholly a matter of either affection or
convenience. It had to do, and in almost passionate sense, with something
which was at least in the category with such things as duties to society.
Worth seemed to her too fine, too real, to be reared by a "truly feminine
woman," as Clara had been known to call herself. Clara's great idea for
Worth was that he be well brought up. That was Clara's idea of her duty
to society. And it was Katie's notion of her duty to society to save him
from being too well brought up.

The things she had been seeing, and suffering, in the past year made her
feel almost savagely on the subject.

Katie had been there since October. Clara had magnanimously permitted
Worth to remain with his Aunt Kate most of the time, with the provision
that Katie bring him to her as often as she wanted him. This was
unselfish of Clara, and cheaper.

Clara's alimony was not small, but neither were her tastes. Indeed the
latter rose to the proportions of duties to society.

Katie knew it was as such she must treat them in the next half hour. She
must save the "maternal instinct" Clara was always talking about--usually
adding that it was a thing which Katie, of course, could not
understand--by taking it under the sheltering wing of the "child's good."

Katie knew just how to reach the emotions which Clara had, without
outraging too much the emotions she persuaded herself she had.

So she began speaking in a large way of life, how hard it was, how
complicated. How they all loved Worth and wished to do the best thing for
him, how she feared it must hurt the child's personality, living in that
unsettled fashion, now under one influence, now under another. She spoke
of Clara's own future, how she had _that_ to think of and how it was hard
she be so--restricted. She drew a vivid picture of what life might be if
Clara didn't "provide for the future"--she was careful to use no phrase
so raw to truly feminine ears as "make a good marriage." And then, rather
curtly when it came to it, tired of the ingratiating preamble, she asked
Clara what she would thin