JANET
(with relentless logic)
My dear Aunt Harriet, women had children thousands of years before marriage was invented. I dare say they will go on doing so thousands of years after it has ceased to exist.
MRS. DE MULLIN
Janet!
JANET
Well, mother, that’s how I feel. And I believe it’s how all wholesome women feel if they would only acknowledge it. I wanted to have a child. I always did from the time when I got too old to play with dolls. Not an adopted child or a child of some one else’s, but a baby of my very own. Of course I wanted to marry. That’s the ordinary way a woman wants to be a mother nowadays, I suppose. But time went on and nobody came forward, and I saw myself getting old and my chance slipping away. Then I met-never mind. And I fell in love with him. Or perhaps I only fell in love with love. I don’t know. It was so splendid to find some one at last who really cared for me as women should be cared for! Not to talk to because I was clever or to play tennis with because I was strong, but to kiss me and to make love to me! Yes! To make love to me!
DE MULLIN
(solemnly)
Listen to me, my girl. You say that now, and I dare say you believe it. But when you are older, when Johnny is grown up, you will bitterly repent having brought into the world a child who can call no man father.