A commonplace retaliation might have suggested itself to her, but there was no fighting instinct in Rachael now.  She did not want to pique him, to goad him, to flirt with him.  He should be hers honorably and openly, without devices, without intrigue.  Stirred to the deeps of her being by wifehood and motherhood, by her passionate love for her husband and children, it was a humiliating thought that she must coquette with and flatter other men.  As a matter of fact, she found it difficult to talk with any interest of anything except Warren, his work and his plans, of Jimmy and Derry, and perhaps of Home Dunes.  If it were a matter of necessity she might always turn to the new plays and books, the opera of the season, or the bill for tenement requirements or juvenile delinquents, but mere personalities and intrigue she knew no more.  These matters were all of secondary interest to her now; it seemed to Rachael that the time had come when mere personalities, when bridge and cocktails and dancing and half-true scandals were not satisfying.

“Warren,” she said one evening when the move to Home Dunes was near, “should you be sorry if I began to go regularly to church again?”

“No,” he said indifferently, giving her rather a surprised glance over his book.  “Churchgoing coming in again?”

“It’s not that,” Rachael said, smiling over a little sense of pain, “but I—­I like it.  I want the boys to think that their mother goes to church and prays—­and I really want to do it myself!”

He smiled, as always a little intolerant of what sounded like sentiment.

“Oh, come, my dear!  Long before the boys are old enough to remember it you’ll have given it up again!”

“I hope not,” Rachael said, sighing.  “I wish I had never stopped.  I wish I were one of these mild, nice, village women who put out clean stockings for the children every Saturday night, and clean shirts and ginghams, and lead them all into a pew Sunday morning, and teach them the Golden Rule, and to honor their father and their mother, and all the rest of it!”

“And what do you think you would gain by that?” Warren asked.

“Oh, I would gain—­security,” Rachael said vaguely, but with a suspicion of tears in her eyes.  “I would have something to—­to stand upon, to be guided by.  There is a purity, an austerity, about that old church-going, loving-God-and-your-neighbor ideal.  Truth and simplicity and integrity and uprightness—­my old great-grandmother used to use those words, but one doesn’t ever hear them any more!  Everything’s half black and half white nowadays; we’re all as good or as bad as we happen to be born.  There’s no more discipline, no more self-denial, no more development of character!  I want to—­to hold on to something, now that forces I can’t control are coming into my life.”

“What do you mean by forces you can’t control?” he asked with a sort of annoyed interest.

“Love, Warren,” she answered quickly.  “Love for you and the boys, and fear for you and the boys.  Love always brings fear.  And illness—­I never thought of it before I was ill.  And jealousy—­”