"I must not
let myself be swept away by a rush of feeling and I must not let her be.
"Do not think," he said, "that I haven't tenderness for you. I am filled
with it. But I want to have our talk. I want to know what you expect me to
believe and how you want me to live."
He felt her hand stiffen in his.
"Whether or not we are worth while to each other," she added.
"Yes," he said.
And then she began to talk, telling him in a quiet steady voice that
steadied something in him what she wanted to make out of her life. Her
idea was one of service to mankind through children. She had seen girl
friends of hers, with whom she had gone to school, grow up and marry. They
had wealth and education, fine well-trained bodies, and they had been
married only to live lives more fully devoted to pleasure. One or two who
had married poor men had only done so to satisfy a passion in themselves,
and after marriage had joined the others in the hungry pursuit of
pleasure.
"They do nothing at all," she said, "to repay the world for the things
given them, the wealth and well-trained bodies and the disciplined minds.
They go through life day after day and year after year wasting themselves
and come in the end to nothing but indolent, slovenly vanity.
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