"Your husband"; and thinking of John's present homeless condition, she continued hastily, "and life itself,—to be some one,—you owe something to yourself."
"Yes," Alice assented, smiling,—"if we only knew what it was!"
"Besides if we were all like you, Alice dear, we should be paupers. Even we can't afford—"
"We should be paupers together, then! No, you can't convince me—it's against Nature."
"All modern life is against Nature," the young woman retorted glibly; "just at present I regard Nature as a mighty poor thing."
She stretched her thin arms behind her head and turned on the lounge.
"That's why the people who made this country are dying out so rapidly, giving way before Swedes and Slavs and others,—because those people are willing to have children."
"Meantime we have the success!" Isabelle cried languidly. "Apres nous the Slavs,—we are the flower! An aristocracy is always nourished on sterility!"
"Dr. Fuller!" Alice commented…. "So the Colonel is going with you to the
Springs?"
"Yes, poor old Colonel!—he must get away—he's awfully broken up," and she added sombrely. "That's one trouble with having children,—you expect them to think and act like you. You can't be willing to let them be themselves."