{145}
Nevertheless, when he spoke, he only said, "And Marvel? Is Marvel called to be motherless?"
Clarissa's serene face clouded faintly. The question of Marvel did, indeed, puzzle even her facility. And yet she had light on that problem also.
"If I really prove to be any good,--and I think I shall be a helper in a movement that is going to revolutionize the earth,"--Clarissa said gravely, "there are others to consider besides Marvel. It--why, it may be, Paul that my duty is to the race! I'm not an especially good mother for Marvel at her present age--the young-animal stage of her development. All a child under twelve years needs is to be properly fed, and clothed, and taught the elementary things. It has all been standardized, and is a matter for experts, anyhow. Your sister Josephine {146} would be a better mother for her for the next few years than I. Why should I do what others can do better? When Marvel begins to think, it will be different. Then she will need my influence. I should like to let you have her for the next few years, and have her come to me when she is fifteen or sixteen. How would that suit you, Paul?"
Her husband moved his shoulders imperceptibly, but said nothing. The thing had passed the point where rational speech, as he conceived it, was in place. If Clarissa did not see the shallowness, the sheer indecency, of discarding one's human relations as if they were old clothes, he could not make her see it. Was it only half an hour ago that he had come down the street in the spring sunshine, under the budding elms, bringing Clarissa a bunch of {147} daffodils and thinking of making a garden, and of all the dear, homely April tasks?
Clarissa assumed that his silence was one of acquiescence. Sooner or later people always acquiesced.
"It is really sweet of you to take it like this, Paul," she said warmly. "I never have understood why people should n't be thoroughly rational about these matters. There's no occasion for bitterness. I should like to have people say we had remained ideal friends. I shall always be as much interested in your welfare as in my own.--Yes, more. I should never dream of marrying again, myself, but in time I think it might be well for you to divorce me and do so." Her mobile face became introspective, absorbed. "Ruth Lawrence is rather too sentimental, not energetic enough for a professor's wife. And Nora Mills is heartless. I think {148} she would marry you for a home, but you must n't let her do it. There is Evelyn Ames. I think Evelyn would do. She is so gentle and reliable!"
She was actually absorbed in this problem, her husband perceived to his utter amazement. He shivered with distaste. This was too grotesque. It could not be true.
His wife looked at him for approval. She noted that the look of fear was gone from his dark eyes. Something unwonted, ironic, flashed there in its stead. It was neither mirth nor malice, yet approached both. He set his boyish-looking mouth firmly, and shook off his silence as one throws off a nightmare. He would meet her on her own ground, and be as indifferent as she.
"Really, Clarissa, that is the first sensible thing you have said this {149} afternoon," he forced himself to say.--"Why, what's this?"