"You don't know anything about them practically."
"Except at the Maternity Hospital.... Oh, Silvie, it is ghastly.... It's horrid! horrid!—it's devilishly unfair! ... Young girls in the springtide of youth crept in and out of that dreadful place like the white ghosts of murdered souls! If maternity didn't slay them, it killed the better part of them. Then the world ended for them—youth, hope, freedom ended with the first thin cry of the tyrant that dooms all women.... Yes, I—hate children!" She stood a moment, slim hands on her hips, head lowered with the brown locks clustering against her cheeks; then, looking up:
"But I mean to have one of my own sometime. Life to the full, dregs and all, before I die. That is my programme."
Silvette laughed. "This is a new and recent development, isn't it?"
"I'm developing like lightning."
"Lightning develops quickly, but it doesn't last, dear."
Diana, lost in retrospection again, smiled vaguely. Then, lifting her pretty eyes:
"Did you ever see starlings feeding their young? A pair nested opposite the studio. I found their evolutions rather interesting."
"No doubt," said her sister. "Is that what has aroused the maternal instinct? Come, who is to bathe first. Pull down the shade and turn on the electricity, and ring for the maid, dear. She ought to lay out our gowns at once."
Diana did as she was bidden; then, on impulse, sat down at the little fly-away desk and scribbled a note: