"Oh, Roger, it is tragic, really. I felt it all evening, and when they followed you down the stairs and I knew you would come back alone and they would go to that cold, dismal flat—they seemed suddenly so cut off, so separate. They were the Mitchells and—and we were the Bartons—and it hurt."
"But, honey girl, that's such a natural thing. It's always that way. How did you expect to feel toward your lawful husband?" he added, trying to force an answering smile into Anne's eyes. But she only burrowed deeper into his shoulder and he felt her body quivering.
"It's awful the way children grow up and go away. Mamma hasn't anything really but me and Belle. She's gone on all these years—kind of looking forward, feeling in the midst of life—oh, I can't get it into words, but she doesn't seem to have anything. She's always been so cheerful and planning and doing the best she knew how—and now—there doesn't seem to be any reason for her to keep it up."
Roger stroked Anne's hair gently. "I know, dear, but any one who hasn't anything of his very own in life, has to come to that point. And most people haven't."
"But she did have something of her own. We were her own. She's lost it."
"Nobody can be anybody else's own, not lastingly their own. Men and women who haven't anything but their children, haven't really anything at all. They're just vehicles for the next generation, a kind of machine to keep things running. And what's the good of keeping things running, unless you make them better?"
Anne lay close to Roger, her nerves relaxing under the soft touch of his fingers.
"Roger," she whispered after a long silence, "don't you ever want children?"
Roger's stroking of her hair ceased. She looked up into his suddenly grave eyes. Already Anne was seeing life in relation to children, and he had not thought of a child at all. It seemed very necessary to be honest in his answer.
"It's this way. I do, if you do. But there's so much to do in the world, and there are so many people in it already, that it seems to me selfish just to add to the numbers. There's a lot of talk about children being the highest work of the race and all that, but it seems to me it's on the part of people who can't do anything else. Most anybody can have children, and very few can do anything else; but what's the good of perpetuating a race on and on without time or space to grow in? As for the comfort of children, the selfish clutching at companionship or less lonely age—well—if the children are really worth while as human beings, if they're going to add anything to the sum of life, they have to be so far in advance of their parents' generation—that you just can't bridge the gap. And even if they're not, but just trudge along in the old groove—still they're themselves and not you really. They——"