"'Is there any use trying to do anything with anybody like that?' says Robin.
"'Is there?' says I, but I looked right straight at Christopher. If there wasn't no use trying to do anything with little Eph, with his mother out there in the kitchen, then what was the use of trying to do anything with Chris, with his father here in the front bedroom? Sick will, tainted blood, ruined body—to what were we all saving Chris? Maybe to misery and final defeat and some awful going out.
"'I don't know,' she says, restless. 'Maybe Alex is right....'
"She looked out towards the lilac bushes again, and I knew how all of a sudden they probably dissolved away to be the fine green in the conservatory at Proudfit House, and how she was seeing herself back in the bright room, with its summer of leaves, and before the tea wagon, making tea for Alex lounging in his low chair, begging her not, in heaven's name, to try to teach the wise old world....
" ... I knew well enough how she felt. Every woman in the world knows. In that minute, or I missed my guess, she was finding herself clinging passionate and rebellious to the mere ordered quiet of the life Alex would make for her; to the mere outworn routine, the leisure of long days in pretty rooms, of guests and house parties and all the little happy flummery of hospitality, the doing-nothingness, or the nice tasks, of travelling; the joy of sinking down quiet into the easy ways to do and be. Something of the sheer, clear, mere self-indulgence of the last-notch conservative was sweeping over her, the quiet, the order, the plain safety of the unchanging, of going along and going along and leaving things pretty much as they are, expecting them to work themselves out ... the lure of all keeping-stillness. And I knew she was wondering, like women do when they're tired or blue or get a big job to do or see a house like the Cadozas', why, after all, she shouldn't, in Alex's way, make herself as dainty in morals and intellect as she could and if she wanted to 'meddle,' to do so at arm's length, with some of the material that is cheap and abundant—like Chris....
"'Maybe there isn't any use trying to do anything with Chris, either,' I says brutal. 'Mebbe Nature's way is best. Mebbe she knows best when to let them die off.'
"Robin's arms kind of shut up on the little kiddie. He looked up.
"'Did you squeeze me on purpose?' he whispered.
"She nodded at him.