"It is terribly hard. I'm so humiliated—and—and I suppose no more reticent woman ever lived."
"Oh, reticence! Why not emulate the younger generation? I'm not sure—although I prefer the happy medium myself—that they are not wiser than their grandmothers and their maiden aunts. On the principle that confession is good for the soul, I don't believe that women will be so obsessed by—well, let us say, sex, in the future."
Miss Trevor flushed darkly. "It is possible.… That's what I am—a maiden aunt. Just that and nothing more."
"Nothing more? I thought you were accounted one of the most useful women in serious New York. A sort of mother to the East Side."
"Mother? How could I be a mother? I'm only a maiden aunt even down there. Not that I want to be a mother——"
"I was going to ask you why you did not marry even now. It is not too late to have children of your own——"
"Oh, yes, it is. That's all over—or nearly. But I can't say that I ever did long for children of my own, although I get on beautifully with them."
"Well?" asked Mary patiently, "what is it you do want?"
"A husband!" This time there was no doubt about the explosion.
Mary felt a faint sensation of distaste, and wondered if she were reverting to type as a result of this recent association with the generation that still clung to the distastes and the disclaimers of the nineteenth century. "Why didn't you marry when you were a girl? I am told that you were quite lovely."