Their departure was one little aspect of the war: woman perforce dependent upon the manlier woman ... while out in France the fatal shrapnel bullets ripped through the staggering ’planes....
III
“Deb,” Gillian lifted an appalled white face from burial in her palms; “Deb, she’s right. Antonia’s right. I’m to blame for this little tragedy.”
“So am I. We all talked—and forgot that Nell listened and did not quite understand.”
“I did more than talk ... with the result that Nell is to have the baby I wanted and denied myself.... It seems that I couldn’t save that poor little love-child from birth, after all! But surely I must have had the sense to say there should be above all a case and a reason before girls chucked marriage to the winds.... What possible reason could those children have had to play the fool?”
“The individual exception is beyond Nell. What you did was good—to her. She took the example and grafted it promiscuously.”
“Antonia called us all fatally promiscuous ... but Antonia——” Gillian hesitated. “Artemis on the turn,” she remarked presently. “Deb—there’s a time when virginity inevitably becomes spinsterhood. It’s rather a dangerous time.... Antonia has kept fiercely pure——”
“Out of a sort of protest to us....”
“Perhaps.”