"Why are you always so afraid of becoming a mother?" Allan asked. In his gruff low voice was a fierce appeal. "It's this obsession in your mind that you'll be a mother like Edith. And that's absurd! You never will! You say you're afraid of not keeping school the first thing in your life! But you always do and you always will! You're putting it ahead of me now!"
"Yes, I can put it ahead of you! But I couldn't put it ahead of my child!" He winced at this and she noticed it. "Because you are strong, and the child would be weak! The child would be like Bruce to-night!"
"Are you sure if you marry you must have a child?"
"Yes," she answered huskily, "if I married you I'd want a child. And that want in me would grow and grow until it made both of us wretched. I'm that kind of a woman. That's why my work has succeeded so far—because I've a passion for children! They're not my work, they're my very life!" She bowed her head, her mouth set hard. "But so are you," she whispered. "And since this is settled, Allan, what do you think? Shall we try to go on—working together side by side—seeing each other every day as we have been doing all these months? Rather hard on both of us, don't you think? I do, I feel that way," she said. Again her features quivered. "The kind of feeling I have—for you—would make that rather—difficult!"
His grip tightened on her hands.
"I won't give you up," he said. "Later you will change your mind."
He left the room and went out of the house. Deborah sat rigid. She trembled and the tears came. She brushed them angrily away. Struggling to control herself, presently she grew quieter. Frowning, with her clear gray eyes intently staring before her, she did not see her father come into the doorway. He stopped with a jerk at sight of her face.
"What's the matter?" he asked. She started.
"Nothing's the matter! How is Bruce?"
"I don't know. Who went out a few minutes ago?"