“Tell me what it is.”
Charlotte Lovell looked about the sunny prosperous room as if it were the image of her world, and that world were a prison she must break out of. She lowered her head. “I want—to get away,” she panted.
“Get away? From Joe?”
“From his ideas—the Ralston ideas.”
Delia bridled—after all, she was a Ralston! “The Ralston ideas? I haven’t found them—so unbearably unpleasant to live with,” she smiled a little tartly.
“No. But it was different with you: they didn’t ask you to give up things.”
“What things?” What in the world (Delia wondered) had poor Charlotte that any one could want her to give up? She had always been in the position of taking rather than of having to surrender. “Can’t you explain to me, dear?” Delia urged.
“My poor children—he says I’m to give them up,” cried the girl in a stricken whisper.
“Give them up? Give up helping them?”
“Seeing them—looking after them. Give them up altogether. He got his mother to explain to me. After—after we have children ... he’s afraid ... afraid our children might catch things.... He’ll give me money, of course, to pay some one ... a hired person, to look after them. He thought that handsome,” Charlotte broke out with a sob. She flung off her bonnet and smothered her prostrate weeping in the cushions.