I've weakened him. All along I've weakened him. I've fussed over him
like a hen after her duckling when it takes to the water. I wouldn't let
him swim for fear he'd get drowned. And so--he just flops about and
looks disgusting. I've made him run away from temptation. That was
because I couldn't keep on being disappointed in him. Because I couldn't
face the disgust of him coming home dirty and smelly and saying filthy
things to me--and sleeping close to him. Andrew," she called to the
baby, who looked at her solemnly and went on playing with the little
pebbles at his feet. "Listen, darling, what mother's telling you. 'He
that fights and runs away lives to fight another day.' I made him run
away from whisky, and all the time it's throwing down challenges to him,
putting out its tongue at him, pulling rude faces at him. I've been
protecting myself from the things drunkards' wives have to put up
with--Oh, but I was trying to protect him, too!"

The last words were wrung from her in self-defence.

"What I ought to have done was to take the whisky, make him look at it
all round and tell it, with his own conviction and not mine, to go to
hell. I ought never, never to have protected him, and made him a
hothouse plant."

As she said it she knew, incontrovertibly, that she could never do
anything but protect people. It was the way she was made. And she became
very frightened that, some day, she might make Andrew a hothouse plant,
too.

She looked at the thin, grey-backed book again and more light came to
her. She flung herself on the ground, her face on the soft grass. The
baby, looking at her wonderingly, crawled towards her, and snuggled up
to her, his wet little hands on her neck.

"Oh make me weak!" she cried as though praying to the earth and the air
and the water to batter her. "Make me weak--smash me and tear me up, so
I'll have to be taken care of. Then I'll let him be strong instead of
me! Oh but it's cruel! Why should one person be weak to make another
strong? Why can't we march on in armour, shoulder to shoulder?"

And then came the thought that, perhaps, had not her father and Louis
been the men they were she would never have learnt to wear her armour.
The wisdom of nature that made the protective coverings of birds and
beasts had given her her armour--made her grow her armour out of her
surroundings. This thought made her gasp. She sat still a very long time
letting it sink in.

"I wonder," she said slowly, l