"Did I have any when I lived according to it?"
The dentist, at the end of his arguments, turned the door-knob.
"Some day, Alves, he will reproach you justly for what you've done."
"I shall be dead before that day."
"I've no patience with you, talking of death and hoping you'll never have children."
The old dentist stumbled out into the portico, and, without further words, trudged down the road. Alves lingered in the open door in spite of the intense cold, and watched him, with an unwonted feeling of loneliness. The few people that touched her solitary life seemed to draw back, repelled by something unusual, unsafe in her and her situation. Why was she so obstinate about this trivial matter of a ceremony that counted for so much with most people? At first her refusal had been a sentiment, merely, an instinctive, unreasoned decision. Now, however, there were stronger causes: she would not consent to tie his hands, to make him realize the irrevocableness of his step. Time might come when…
And why had she so stoutly denied a wish for children? These days her thoughts went back often to her dead child—the child of the man she had married. Preston's share in the child was so unimportant now! To the mother belonged the child. Perhaps it was meant to be so in order that something might come to fill the empty places of a woman's heart. If she had children, what difference would that ignorance of the man she loved, that division from him, make? The man had his work, his ideas—the children of his soul; and the woman had the children of her body. Each went his way and worked his life into the fabric of the world. Love! Love was but an episode, an accident of the few blossoming years of life. To woman there was the gift of children, and to man the gift of labor. She wondered if this feeling would increase as the years passed. Would she think more and more of the child she had had, the other man's child? And less of him whom she loved?
"Trying to make an icicle of yourself?" a jovial voice called out; the next moment Dresser came up the steps. The portico shook as he stamped his feet. He wore a fur-lined coat, and carried a pair of skates. His face, which had grown perceptibly fuller since his connection with The Investor's Monthly, was red with cold.
"The ice on the lake is first-rate, Alves, and I skated up the shore to see if I could get you for a spin."
"I am glad you came," Alves said, with new life. "I was kind of lonely and blue, and the doctor is off on a case the other side of nowhere."