And in the end, Jean let it have its way.
It came and went with her, at home, in the office and to Mary's.
Jean thought of Amelia Gorman and the gray house on the windy hills. If she had a child, nothing ever again could shut her off from the current of life. It was the only real thing in all the world. It was the past and the future down to the end of time.
Jean weighed the price. A child of hers and Gregory's against a national congress of strangers. Any one of a dozen other women could manage that, but her job, her very own job, no one else could do. Before the miracle of her own power Jean was humble.
A strange new softness came over her, so that Martha wondered, but Mary referred to it outright, one night during her last week in New York when they sat talking before the open window as they had not done for months, with Madame la Marquise budding to youth before them.
"Jean Herrick, I wish to goodness you'd stop looking like a large blonde angel, just about to fly beyond mortal ken. It makes me feel a hundred years old, and as if I hadn't accomplished a single thing the whole time I've been here."
Jean laughed. "I'm sorry that I look like such a foolish thing as a large, blonde angel, but I'd rather you felt a hundred than I, Mary."
"But I'm not stuck on it myself, Jean."
"Then don't. It's all in the mind, anyhow. No one needs to grow old."
"Piffle. There's a lot of rubbish talked like that these days. There's no need to grow grumpy and useless, but, after all, we can't turn back the hands of the clock. We do grow out of one possibility into another—and they don't come back either."