“Yes, I know, Greg.  There’s something very appealing about a sick kiddie.  Bill was ill once, just after we were married, such a little thing she looked, with her hair all cut!  And that did—­now that I remember it—­it really did bring Clarence and me tremendously close.  We’d sit and wait for news, and slip out for little meals, and I’d make him coffee late at night.  I remember thinking then that I never wanted a child, to make me suffer as we suffered then!”

“Mother love, then, we concede,” Doctor Gregory said, smiling.

“Well, yes, I suppose so.  Some mothers.  I don’t believe a mother like Florence ever was really made to suffer through loving.  However, there is mother love!”

“And married love.”

“No, there I don’t agree.  While the novelty lasts, while the passion lasts—­not more than a year or two.  Then there’s just civility—­opening the city house, opening the country house, entertaining, going about, liking some things about each other, loathing others, keeping off the dangerous places until the crash comes, or, perhaps, for some lucky ones, doesn’t come!”

“What a mushy little sentimentalist you are, Rachael!” Gregory said with a rather uncomfortable laugh.  “You’re too dear and sweet to talk that way!  It’s too bad—­it’s too bad to have you feel so!  I wish that I could carry you away from all these people here—­ just for a while!  I’d like to prescribe that sea beach you spoke about last night!  Wouldn’t we love our desert island!  Would you help me build a thatched hut, and a mud oven, and string shells in your hair, and swim way out in the green breakers with me?”

“And what makes you think that there would be some saving element in our relationship?” Rachael asked in a low voice.  “What makes you think that our love would survive the—­the dry-rot of life?  People would send us silver and rugs, and there would be a lot of engraving, and barrels of champagne, and newspaper men trying to cross-examine the maids, and caterers all over the place, but a few years later, wouldn’t it be the same old story?  You talk of a desert island, and swimming, and seaweed, Greg!  But my ideas of a desert island isn’t Palm Beach with commercial photographers snapping at whoever sits down in the sand!  Look about us, Greg—­ who’s happy?  Who isn’t watching the future for just this or just that to happen before she can really feel content?  Young girls all want to be older and more experienced, older girls want to be young; this one is waiting for the new house to be ready, that one—­like Florence—­is worrying a little for fear the girls won’t quite make a hit!  Clarence worries about Billy, I worry about Clarence—­”

“I worry about you!” said Doctor Gregory as she paused.

“Of course you do, bless your heart!” Rachael laughed.  “So here we are, the rich and fashionable and fortunate people of the world, having a cloudless good time!”