"Well, they've made a sad mess of it."
"I know. They didn't mean to build a prison, but they have. Some day there will be no state or church locking people in—but there will always be walls around real love—like ours. It makes its own and grows stronger and stronger behind them. And when it can't, it just withers and dies and—there's nothing left. I can't have it that way, Mary, I can't. I can't watch it grow less, and I know it will—and I can't shut it out forever. There is only one way, Mary—I want a child—terribly."
Dr. Mary dropped her cigarette so that it smoldered into the rug and burned a small, black hole.
"But, Jean——"
"I know, Mary. I've thought it out—everything, every single thing. I won't lose my job, because, of course, I shall give it up. I'll go away. I shall have to lie, right and left and all the time. I shall lie to the world and I shall lie to mummy. That will be the hardest, lying to mummy. But it would kill her, and I don't want to hurt mummy, but I am not going to let her stop my life, withhold the biggest thing in it. No one has a right to do that. It is my life and my job, Mary; the job of every woman when she really loves a man. And nothing else matters."
The little doctor gulped twice, and rapped out:
"Then go ahead and have it."
Jean slipped to the floor and laid her head on the other's knees.
"Mary, do you think—I'm—very——"
"No, Jean, I don't. I'm—I'm green with envy."