ither that Sylvia has had
a very different sort of early life from poor Victoria's. She has
breathed pure air always--I trust her to recognize its opposite."

He made an impatient gesture of exasperation. "But she'll be _in_
it--it'll be too late--"

"It's never too late." She spoke quickly, but her unwavering
opposition began to have in it a note of tension.

"She'll be caught--she'll have to go on because it'll be too hard to
get out--"

"The same vigor that makes her resist us now will give her strength
then--she's not Eleanor Hubert."

Her husband burst out upon her in a frightened, angry rush of
reproach: "Barbara--how _can_ you! You make me turn cold! This isn't a
matter of talk--of theories--we're confronted with--"

She faced him down with unflinching, unhappy eyes. "Oh, of course
if we are to believe in liberty only so long as everything goes
smoothly--" She tried to add something to this, but her voice broke
and she was silent. Her husband looked at her, startled at her pallor
and her trembling lips, immensely moved by the rare discomposure of
that countenance. She said in a whisper, her voice shaking, "Our
little Sylvia--my first baby--"

He flung himself down in the chair beside her and took her hand. "It's
damnable!" he said.

His wife answered slowly, with long pauses. "No--it's all right--it's
part of the whole thing--of life. When you bring children into the
world--when you live at all--you must accept the whole. It's not fair
to rebel--to rebel at the pain--when--"

"Good God, it's not _our_ pain I'm shrinking from--!" he broke out.

"No--oh no--that would be easy--"

With an impulse of yearning, and protection, and need, he leaned to
put his arms around her, his graying beard against her pale cheek.
They sat silent for a long time.

In the room above them, Sylvia bent over a problem in trigonometry,
and rapidly planned a new evening-dress. After a time she got up and
opened her box of treasures from Aunt Victoria. The yellow chiffon
would do--Jerry had said he liked yellow--she could imagine how Mrs.
Hubert would expend herself on Eleanor's toilets for this great
occasion--if she could only hit on a design which wouldn't look
as though it came out of a woman's magazine--something really
sophisticated--she could cover her old white slippers with that bit
of gold-tissue off Aunt Victoria's hat--she shook out the chiffon and
laid it over the bed, looking intently at its gleaming, shimmerin