"When they have dethroned their God and repudiated their families,
what is there left to worship and work for but themselves?" she
demanded grimly. "Half the women I meet are as mad for incense to
their vanity as the men are mad for money."
"Lucretia," I said with all the firmness I could muster, "I do not
think you ought to allow yourself to take this thing in this way. It
is regrettable enough without working yourself up to such a pitch of
agony."
She looked into the fire as if she had not heard me, and went rapidly
on:--
"Sixty years ago, such things were unheard-of; forty years ago, they
were a disgrace; twenty years ago, they were {75} questioned; to-day,
they are accepted. And yet they say the world advances! With all my
troubles, Benjamin, I am just learning why men call death gracious--and
my daughter is my teacher. Desire is at the restless age. I have seen
a good many women between thirty and forty try to wreck their lives
and other people's. You see, the dew is gone from the flowers. They
have come to the heat and burden of the day. And they don't like it."
"You mean," I said, laboriously trying to follow her glancing thought
in my own fashion, "that they miss the drama of early romance, and
resent the fact that it has been replaced by the larger drama of
responsibility and action?"
"That is a fine, sonorous way of putting it," she said bitterly, "but
there are more forcible ways."
{76}
She laughed unpleasantly. I could feel the cruel words trembling on
her lips, but she checked herself.
"Oh, what is the use of talking," she cried, "or of casting stones at
other women? It doesn't help me to bear Desire's falling away.
Benjamin, I would have known how to forgive a child who had sinned. I
don't know how to forgive one who has failed like this! Desire is
throwing away a life, not because it is intolerable, not because it is
hard, even; but just because it has ceased to be exciting and amusing
enough. But it is _her_ life that she throws away. She cannot make a new
one that will be real and her very own. She says she has ceased to
love. They always say that. But love comes and goes always. There is
no such thing as perpetual joy. Love is the morning vision. We are
meant to hide that {77} vision in our hearts and serve it on our
knees. Good women know this and do it. That is what it means to be a
wife. The vision is the thing we cherish and live for to the end.
Desire is no cheated woman. She had young love at its best; she has
her children's faces. There is such a thing as perpetual peace; life
gives it to the loyally married. She might have had that, too. But she
throws it all away--for novelty, for new sensations. My daughter is a
wanton!"
_"Lucretia!"_
The energy of my ejaculation, the sight of my surprise, brought my
sister back to her normal self. She dropped into her chair again,
looking wan and shocked at her own violence of expression.
"You see how it is," she said humbly. "I am not fit to trust myself
to talk {78} about it. I ought to apologize for my language,
Benjamin,--but that is the way I feel."