“She told me to ask you what was said and I trust you will tell me.”

“I will.  You remember that I had a whole society of women in the parlors and I could only give you a short farewell; but I was much grieved to send you away with such a brooding sorrow in your heart.  The next day I was putting the house in order and writing to you and I did not go out.  But on the morning of the third day I determined to visit my mother and to call at Hatton Hall as I returned home.

“I did not have a pleasant visit at Harlow.  Since mother has begun to save money, she has lost all interest in any other subject.  I told her how affairs were between us, and though she had hitherto been rabidly in favor of no children she appeared that morning indifferent to everything but the loss of a brood of young chickens which some animal had eaten or carried off.  On this subject she was passionately in earnest; she knew to a farthing the amount of her loss, and when I persisted in telling her how you and I had parted, she only reiterated in a more angry manner her former directions and assurances on this subject.

“After a very spare dinner she was more attentive to my trouble.  She said it had become a serious question in nearly all married lives—­”

“I deny that, Jane.  The large majority of women, I am sure, when they marry do not hold themselves outraged and degraded by the consequences, nor do they consider natural functions less honorable than social ones.  Money can release a woman from work, but it cannot release her from any service of love.”

“Men forget very easily the physical sufferings of wives.  I love our little Martha as well as, perhaps better than, you do, but I remember clearly that for nearly a whole year I endured the solitude, sickness, and acute suffering of maternity.  And whatever else you do, you will never persuade me to like having children.  And pray what kind of children will women bear when they don’t want them?”

“Well, Jane, your question would stagger me, if I did not know that Nature often skips a generation, and produces some older and finer type.”

“Highly civilized men don’t want children.  Lady Harlow told me so, John.”

“Well then, Jane, highly civilized men are in no danger.  They need not fear what women can do to them.  They will only find women pleasant to meet and easy to leave.  I saw many, many women in the London parks and shopping district so perverted as to be on friendly terms with dogs, and in their homes, with cats and cockatoos, and who had no affection for children—­women who could try to understand the screams of a parrot, the barking of a dog, but who would not tolerate the lovely patois of the nursery.  Jane, the salvation of society depends on good mothers, and if women decline to be mothers at all, it is a shameful and dangerous situation.”

“Oh, no!  Why should I, for instance, undertake the reformation of society?  I wish rather to educate and reform myself.”