"Surely," said Frau Karoline, as I returned her pedigree, "you could not do better for your first born child than to honour me with his motherhood. Not only is my pedigree of the purest of chemical lines, reaching back to the establishment of the eugenic control, but I myself have taken the highest honours in the training for motherhood."
"Yes," I acknowledged, "you seem very well trained."
"I am particularly well versed," she continued, "in maternal psychology; and I have successfully cultivated calmness. In the final tests before my confirmation for maternity I was found to be entirely free from erotic and sentimental emotions."
"But," I ventured, "is not maternal love a sentimental emotion?"
"By no means," replied Frau Karoline. "Maternal love of the highest order, such as I possess, is purely intellectual; it recognizes only the passions for the greatness of race and the glory of the Royal House. Such love must be born of the intellect; that is why we women of the scientific group are the best of all mothers. Thus, were I not wholly free from weak sentimentality, I might desire that my second child be sired by the father of my first, but the Eugenic Office has determined that I would bear a stronger child from a younger father, therefore I acquiesced to their change of assignment without emotion, as becomes a proper mother of our well bred race. My first child is extremely intellectual but he is not quite perfect physically, and a mother such as I should bear only perfect children. That alone is the supreme purpose of motherhood. Do you not see that I am fitted for perfect motherhood?"
"Yes," I replied, as I recalled that my instructions were to pay compliments, "you seem to be a perfect mother."
But the cold and logical perfection of Frau Karoline dampened my curiosity and oppressed my spirit of adventure, and I closed the interview with all possible speed and fled headlong to the nearest elevator that would carry me from the level.
~4~
In my first experience I had suffered nothing worse than an embarrassing half hour, so, with more confidence I pressed the bell the second evening, at the apartment of Frau Augusta, daughter of Gustave Schnorr, Authority on Synthetic Nicotine.
Frau Augusta was a woman of thirty-five. She was well-preserved, more handsome and less coldly inhuman than the younger woman.