"I'm not angry; the things I want to say I can't seem to say. It isn't your fault or mine. It's just fate. I hate to think of 'marrying well'—"
"I think I understand," Isabel said, a little appalled at the storm she had raised. "I haven't been troubled by that question because I have a profession, and have something to think about besides marriage, and still we must think about it enough to prepare for it. The world must have its wives and mothers. You are to be a wife and mother, you are fitted for it by nature. Men see that—that is the reason you are never without suitors. All I was going to say, dear, was this: you are worthy the finest and truest man, for you have a great career, I feel sure of it—and so—but no, I'll not lecture you another minute. You're a stronger woman than I ever was, and I feel you can take care of yourself."
"That's just it. I don't feel sure of that yet. I feel dependent upon my father and I ought not to be; I'm out of school, I'm twenty-three years of age, and I want to do something. I must do something—and I don't want to marry as a—as a—because I am a failure."
"Nobody wants you to do that, Rose. But you didn't mean that exactly. You mean you didn't want to come to any man dependent. I don't think you will; you'll find out your best holt, as the men say, and you'll succeed."
Rose looked at her in silence a moment:
"I'm going to confess something," she finally said with a little laugh. "I hate to keep house. I hate to sew, and I can't marry a man who wants me to do the way other women do. I must be intended for something else than a housewife, because I never do a bit of cooking or sewing without groaning. I like to paint fences and paper walls; but I'm not in the least domestic."
Isabel was amused at the serious tone in which Rose spoke.
"There is one primal event which can change all that. I've seen it transform a score of women. It will make you domestic and will turn sewing into a delight."
"What do you mean?" asked Rose, though more than half guessing.
"I mean motherhood."