I have been thinking,
and it has occurred to me that I was not a wise, good woman, and I want
you to forgive me."

His answer involved no words at all, but it was meet for every purpose.
She pushed him away from her, and spoke gravely:

"Will you do something for me, Grant?"

"Yes."

"Will you do it now?"

"Yes--if it be good for you."

"I want you to do this. I want you to imagine me some one else, some
one you regard, but for whom you do not care particularly. And then I
want you to tell me what you think, what you would think best about
the--'the others'"--blushing more fairly than any rose that ever grew
on stem. "Will you do that?"

His face was very earnest. "I will try," he said, "but it will be
difficult to imagine you someone else. How can I do that when I can
look into your eyes, my little wife? I'll try, though."

"Then talk to me, now."

He was troubled. He did not know how to express himself in the spirit
asked of him, and he did not look at her in the beginning.

"Sweetheart, you are a part of me, and you are the greatest of what
there is of my life. It is about you that all my thoughts converge. I
do not suppose there will be any happier, any dearer time ever than
this we are passing together, with none to molest us, or divert us from
each other. You know me well now. I am what I am, and never was a man
of stronger personal moods or one who so hungered for the one woman.
And you are the one woman, the one physical object in the world, I
worship. There is no need that I tell you anything. And you have
learned, too, how I care for you in all greater, and, it may be, purer
ways. We are happy together. But, love of me, we are a man and wife,
an American man and wife, of the social grade--for there are social
grades, despite all our democracy--where, it seems to me, a family has
come to be esteemed almost a disgrace, as something vulgar and
annoying. And it seems to me this is something unnatural, and all
wrong. Whatever nature indicates is best. To do what nature indicates
is to secure the greatest happiness. Trials may come, new sorrows and
incumbrances be risked, but nature brings her recompense. I want you
the mother of our child, of our children, as it may be. I know what
your thought has been, I understand it now, but how can children
separate us? When a man and woman look together upon a child, another
human being, a part of each of them, a being who would never have