"I know she's as good as gold. And she'd be as strong as iron if she was married and had children. I've seen no end of women like that, and I'm not sure they don't make the best wives and mothers. I told your father that. But it's no good trying to tell him the truth."
"No. It's the one thing he can't stand."
"He seems," said Rowcliffe, "to have such an extraordinary distaste for the subject. He approaches it from an impossible point of view—as if it was sin or crime or something. He talks about her controlling herself, as if she could help it. Why, she's no more responsible for being like that than I am for the shape of my nose. I'm afraid I told him that if anybody was responsible he was, for bringing her to the worst place imaginable."
"He did that on purpose."
"I know. And I told him he might as well have put her in a lunatic asylum at once."
He meditated.
"It's not as if he hadn't anybody but himself to think of."
"That's no good. He never does think of anybody but himself. And yet he'd be awfully sorry, you know, if Ally died."
They sat silent, not looking at each other, until Gwenda spoke again.
"Dr. Rowcliffe—"