"They haven't been asked to take it any way."
"Oh well! Love is good while it lasts," Kittums said from the summit of a pedestal of experience, "but if I could change back to Margot St. John again——"
"You wouldn't!"
"Wouldn't I, that's all! This horror that November brings—that's coming every day closer! ... Pat—I haven't told Franky yet, that's to be got over! But I've definitely settled to go to that Institute in Berlin where women can have babies without knowing anything about it—under—Bother! I never can remember the name of that drug!"
Patrine sat up. Her face was curiously expressionless. She said, crushing out the last spark of her cigarette-end against the face of a Chinaman on the lacquer ash-tray that occupied a little stand beside the sofa with the silver Sobranie box:
"You told me something—you showed me the pink book with the pretty title, 'WEEP NO MORE MOTHERS'—wasn't that the name? You've made up your mind? Does it cost the earth?"
"Two hundred for patients of the superior class—wohlgeboren clients. Half paid in advance! Stiff!—but to make sure of not suffering I'd plank a thou'! It's a nightmare, and a Day-mare, that haunts me all the clock round. That's why I'd change—and be Margot St. John again! That's why I can't whoop with joy when my friends tell me they're going to be spliced!"
Patrine got up.
"Oh!—well! Perhaps I shall escape. After all—it's a lottery!"
"Not for big, splendid women like you. You were made to be a mother, Pat!"