ut the great heart of man is stirred--woman
is his baby. She remembered that the language of love is in two
sexes--for the woman superlatives, for the man diminutives. The more
she loves the bigger he grows, but in an ecstasy he could put her in
his pocket. Had not Tommy taught her this? His little one, his child!
Perhaps he really had loved her in the days when they both made
believe that she was infantile; but soon she had shown with fatal
clearness that she was not. Instead of needing to be taken care of,
she had obviously wanted to take care of him: their positions were
reversed. Perhaps, said Grizel to herself, I should have been a man.

If this was the true explanation, then, though Tommy, who had tried so
hard, could not love her, he might be able to love--what is the
phrase?--a more womanly woman, or, more popular phrase still, a very
woman. Some other woman might be the right wife for him. She did not
shrink from considering this theory, and she considered so long that
I, for one, cannot smile at her for deciding ultimately, as she did,
that there was nothing in it.

The strong like to be leaned upon and the weak to lean, and this
irrespective of sex. This was the solution she woke up with one
morning, and it seemed to explain not only David's and Elspeth's love,
but her own, so clearly that in her desire to help she put it before
Tommy. It implied that she cared for him because he was weak, and he
drew a very long face.

"You don't know how the feathers hurt as they come out," he explained.

"But so long as we do get them out!" she said.

"Every other person who knows me thinks that strength is my great
characteristic," he maintained, rather querulously.

"But when you know it is not," said Grizel. "You do know, don't you?"
she asked anxiously. "To know the truth about one's self, that is the
beginning of being strong."

"You seem determined," he retorted, "to prevent my loving you."

"Why?" she asked.

"You are to make me strong in spite of myself, I understand. But,
according to your theory, the strong love the weak only. Are you to
grow weak, Grizel, as I grow strong?"

She had not thought of that, and she would have liked to rock her
arms. But she was able to reply: "I am not trying to help you in order
to make you love me; you know, quite well, that all that is over and
done with. I am trying only to help you to be what a man should be."

She could say that to him, but to herself? Was she pre