"Don't you intend to get married?" asked Eugene curiously.
"I don't know," she replied, realizing what he was driving at. "I'd want to think about that. A woman artist is in a d— of a position anyway," using the letter d only to indicate the word "devil." "She has so many things to think about."
"For instance?"
"Oh, what people think and her family think, and I don't know what all. They ought to get a new sex for artists—like they have for worker bees."
Eugene smiled. He knew what she was driving at. But he did not know how long she had been debating the problem of her virginity as conflicting with her love of distinction in art. She was nearly sure she did not want to complicate her art life with marriage. She was almost positive that success on the operatic stage—particularly the great opportunity for the beginner abroad—was complicated with some liaison. Some escaped, but it was not many. She was wondering in her own mind whether she owed it to current morality to remain absolutely pure. It was assumed generally that girls should remain virtuous and marry, but this did not necessarily apply to her—should it apply to the artistic temperament? Her mother and her family troubled her. She was virtuous, but youth and desire had given her some bitter moments. And here was Eugene to emphasize it.
"It is a difficult problem," he said sympathetically, wondering what she would eventually do. He felt keenly that her attitude in regard to marriage affected his relationship to her. Was she wedded to her art at the expense of love?
"It's a big problem," she said and went to the piano to sing.
He half suspected for a little while after this that she might be contemplating some radical step—what, he did not care to say to himself, but he was intensely interested in her problem. This peculiar freedom of thought astonished him—broadened his horizon. He wondered what his sister Myrtle would think of a girl discussing marriage in this way—the to be or not to be of it—what Sylvia? He wondered if many girls did that. Most of the women he had known seemed to think more logically along these lines than he did. He remembered asking Ruby once whether she didn't think illicit love was wrong and hearing her reply, "No. Some people thought it was wrong, but that didn't make it so to her." Here was another girl with another theory.
They talked more of love, and he wondered why she wanted him to come up to Florizel in the summer. She could not be thinking—no, she was too conservative. He began to suspect, though, that she would not marry him—would not marry anyone at present. She merely wanted to be loved for awhile, no doubt.
May came and with it the end of Christina's concert work and voice study so far as New York was concerned. She had been in and out of the city all the winter—to Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Paul and now after a winter's hard work retired to Hagerstown with her mother for a few weeks prior to leaving for Florizel.