Stand by! She had the drift of this!
She said simply, “Harry, this can’t be.”
“You can’t give up the idea?”
Her hand upon the helm that steered her life constricted. “It is not to be asked of me to give it up.” She paused. She said softly, “Dear, this is a forward step for me. You are asking me to make a sacrifice. I would not ask you.”
He began, “There are sacrifices—”
“They are not asked of men.”
He said, “Rosalie, you said once, when Benji was born, that, if at any time need be, you would give up, not a thing like this, but your work entirely.”
As if to shield or to support her heart she drew her left hand to it. “Would you give up yours, Harry?”
He said quickly, “I’m not suggesting such a thing. It is ridiculous. I’m only showing you—”
She began to say her say, her voice reflective as his own had been. “But you have shown me frightful things, shown me how far and oh, how quick, a thing that starts may go. Oh, my dear, know the answer before it ever is suggested. Sacrifices! It is sacrifice for the children that you profess to mean. Well, let us call it that. Have you ever heard of a father sacrificing himself for his children? There’s no such phrase. There’s only the feminine gender for that. ‘Sacrificed himself for his wife and children.’ It’s a solecism. If grammar means good sense, it isn’t grammar because it’s meaningless. It can’t be said. It’s grotesque. But ‘Sacrificed herself for her husband and her children,’—why, that the commonest of cliches. It’s written on half the mothers’ brows; it should be carved on half the mothers’ tombs—upon my own dear mother’s.” She stood up and faced him. “Harry, not on mine.” She put a gentle hand on his. “I love you—you know what our love is. I love the children—with a truer love that they have never been a burden to me nor I on a single occasion out of mood with them. But, Harry, I will not sacrifice myself for the children. When I ask that of you, ask it of me. But I never will ask it of you.”