ile at the Neale-like
quality of this. She went on, "But don't you think there is such a thing
as spoiling beautiful elements in life, with handling them, questioning
them, for natures that aren't naturally belligerent and ready to fight
for what they want to keep? For instance, when somebody says that
children in a marriage are like drift-wood left high on the rocks of a
dwindled stream, tokens of a flood-time of passion now gone by. . . ." She
did not tell him who had said this. Nor did he ask. But she thought by
his expression that he knew it had been Vincent Marsh.

He said heartily, "I should just call that a nasty-minded remark from
somebody who didn't know what he was talking about. And let it go at
that."

"There, you see," she told him, "that rouses your instinct to resist, to
fight back. But it doesn't mine. It just makes me sick."

"Marise, I'm afraid that you _have_ to fight for what you want to keep
in this world. I don't see any way out of it. And I don't believe that
anybody else can do your fighting for you. You ask if it's not possible
to have beautiful, intimate things spoiled by questioning, criticisms,
doubts. Yes, I do think it is, for young people, who haven't learned
anything of life at first hand. I think they ought to be protected till
they have been able to accumulate some actual experience of life. That's
the only weapon for self-defense anybody can have, what he has learned
of life, himself. Young people are apt to believe what older people tell
them about life, because they don't know anything about it, yet,
themselves, and I think you ought to be careful what is questioned in
their presence. But I don't see that mature people ought to be protected
unless you want to keep them childish, as women used to be kept. Nothing
is your own, if you haven't made it so, and kept it so."

"But, Neale, it's so sickeningly _hard_! Why do it? Why, when everything
seems all right, pry into the deep and hidden roots of things? I don't
_want_ to think about the possibility of some dreadful dry-rot happening
to married people's feelings towards each other, as they get older and
get used to each other. It's soiling to my imagination. What's the use?"

She had so hoped he would help her to sweep them all back to the cellar
labeled "morbid" and lock them down in the dark again. Any other man
would, she thought, amazed at him, _any_ other husband! She focussed all
her personality passionately to force him to a