understand it being a woman's highest
joy to be a mother. I have seen poor miserable women looking down at
their puny nursing babies with such unutterable bliss on their faces that
I've nearly cried for pure joy and sympathy. But in my heart all the time
I felt that this was weakness and folly; that what was bliss to the
mother, stupefying her for a while to the hollowness and emptiness of her
existence, was the beginning of a probable life of misery to the child
that could end only with death. And I have vowed to myself that never
should child of mine have cause to reproach me for selfishness that takes
a guise which might well deceive those who have nothing but the animal
instincts to give them joy in living."

"You will never have children?" asked Geisner.

"I will never marry," she answered. "There is little you can teach a girl
who has worked in Sydney, and I know there are ideas growing all about
which to me seem shameful and unwomanly, excepting that they spare the
little ones. For me, I shall never marry. I will give my life to the
movement, but I will give no other lives the pain of living."

"You will meet him some day, Nellie," said Connie.

"Then I will be strong if it breaks my heart." Ned often thought of this
in after days. Just then he hardly realised how the girl's words affected
him. He was so breathlessly interested. Never had he heard people talk
like this before. He began to dimly understand how it touched the Labour
movement.

"You will miss the best part of life, my dear," said Connie. "I say it
even after what you have seen of that husband of mine."

"You are wrong, Nellie," said Geisner, slowly. "Above us all is a higher
Law, forcing us on. To give up what is most precious for the sake of the
world is good. To give up that which our instincts lead us to for fear of
the world cannot but be bad. For my part, I hold that no door should be
closed to woman, either by force of law or by force of conventionalism.
But if she claims entrance to the Future, it seems to me that she should
not close Life's gate against herself."

"I would close Life's gate altogether if I could," cried Nellie,
passionately. "I would blot Life out. I would--oh, what would I not do?
The things I see around me day after day almost drive me mad."

There was silence for a moment, broken then by Connie's soft laugh.
"Nellie, my dear child," she observed, "you seem quite in earnest. I hope
you won't start with us."

"Don