"Don't you, Dr. Stanchon?" Molly retorted placidly.
He patted her shoulder and capitulated. "But you ought to be spanked, you know," he said. "Now, listen. For what was all this vitality and endurance given you, my child?"
"If you mean twins," said Molly curtly, "I won't. There are plenty of women to have twins, doctor."
"But there are not plenty of women to have your twins," said he.
She grimaced and blew a saucy kiss to him.
"I see why they all want you!" she told him. "But, honestly, do married women never have headaches?"
"There's no good being clever with me, child," he went on, a little wearily (he seemed middle-aged beyond words to her). "You are making a great mistake and when you find it out, it will in all probability be too late to remedy it, worse luck! That's the real harm of all this Advanced Woman stuff: if you could only get it over before twenty-five! But when you wake up, you're nearer forty, and then—what's the difference?"
"I'll marry, then, maybe!"
"Dear child, it doesn't matter a continental what you do, then," he said simply.
She gave a little shudder, in spite of herself. He sounded so final, and his eyes were so bright and deep. She stared into them and, somehow, lost herself—the eyes turned to bright points in space, and Time seemed to stop, with a sort of whir like a clock that runs down...