Ghost of Miss Melody's laugh, floating on the air! Lily smiled, herself, very faintly.
The reductio ad absurdum is not an argument.
"Should I have the courage, if I had children? The courage never to grudge them the experience of suffering, to let them say 'Yes' to Life? To realize, and let them realize, from the very beginning, that no created soul belongs to another—that each must stand alone?"
She dropped her face into her hands, shuddering—realizing something of that ultimate abnegation that imposes nothing, but holds all in reserve.
Would Nicholas have helped her?
She knew that he would not. Their ideals, again and again, differed.
All, all irrelevant. There were no children of his and hers, thank God!
Other thoughts of Nicholas crowded to her mind. His love for her, his uncritical enjoyment of life, a certain child-like spirit of joviality that had harmonized with her own youth.
"But I ought never to have married him."
She was putting hard facts into hard words at last.