"And yet," David replied, "women have been loved who had none of those qualities."
"In spite of the want of them?" Elspeth asked.
"Perhaps because of it," said he.
"They are noble qualities," Elspeth maintained a little sadly, and he assented. "And one of them, at least, is essential," she said. "A woman has no right to be loved who is not helpful."
"She is helpful to the man who loves her," David replied.
"He would have to do for her," Elspeth said, "the very things she should be doing for him."
"He may want very much to do them," said David.
"Then it is her weakness that appeals to him. Is not that loving her for the wrong thing?"
"It may be the right thing," David insisted, "for him."
"And at that point," Tommy said, boyishly, to Grizel, "I ceased to hear them, I was so elated; I felt that everything was coming right. I could not give another thought to their future, I was so busy mapping out my own. I heard a hammering. Do you know what it was? It was our house going up—your house and mine; our home, Grizel! It was not here, nor in London. It was near the Thames. I wanted it to be upon the bank, but you said No, you were afraid of floods. I wanted to superintend the building, but you conducted me contemptuously to my desk. You intimated that I did not know how to build—that no one knew except yourself. You instructed the architect, and bullied the workmen, and cried for more store-closets. Grizel, I saw the house go up; I saw you the adoration and terror of your servants; I heard you singing from room to room."