Lydia was on the point of nervous tears from sheer fatigue, but she clung to her point with a tenacity which in so yielding a nature was profoundly eloquent. “But, Paul, if everybody had always settled down and accepted conditions, and never tried to make them better—”
“There’s a difference between conditions that have to be accepted and those that can be changed,” said Paul sententiously.
Lydia tore herself away from him and stood up, trembling with excitement. She felt that they had stumbled upon the very root of the matter. “But who’s to decide which our conditions are?”
Paul caught at her, laughing. “I am, of course, you firebrand! Didn’t you promise to honor and obey?” He went on with more seriousness, a tender, impatient, condescending seriousness: “Now, Lydia, just stop and think! Do you, can you, consider this a good time for you to try to settle the affairs of the universe—still all upset about your father’s death, and goodness knows what crazy ideas it started in your head—and with an addition to the family expected! And the cook just left!”
“But that’s the way things always are!” she protested. “That’s life. There’s never a time when something important hasn’t just happened or isn’t just going to happen, you have to go right ahead, or you never—why, Paul, I’ve waited for two years for a really good chance for this talk with you—”
“Thank the Lord!” he ejaculated. “I hope it’ll be another two before you treat me to another evening like this. Oh, pshaw, Lydia! You’re morbid, moping around the house too much—and your condition and all. Wait till you’ve got another baby to play with—I don’t remember you had any doubts of anything the first six months of Ariadne’s life. You ought to have a baby a year to keep you out of mischief! Just you wait till you can entertain and live like folks again. In the meantime you hustle around and keep busy and you won’t be so bothered with thinking and worrying.”
Unknowingly, they had drawn again near to the heart of their discussion. Unknowingly Lydia stood before the answer from her husband, the final statement that she wished to hear.
“But to hustle and keep busy—that’s good only so long as you keep at it. The minute you stop—”
Paul’s answer was an epoch in her thought.
“Don’t stop!” he cried, surprised at her overlooking so obvious a solution.