le to
commence and leave off just when she chose.

"You are a little goose," I said jestingly. "You don't know when you
are well off. For months and months you would be ill and disfigured,
unable to come about with me or be my companion, unable to sit to me
for my painting, and afterwards the child would be an unendurable tie
and burden. Besides, as I say, I have an intense dislike to children
and could never live with one anywhere near me. I am afraid, if you
want them, you must go away from me, to some one who has your views."

Suzee came over to where I was sitting and knelt beside my chair,
clasping both hands round my arm.

"Treevor," she said, almost in a whisper, "you are so beautiful with
your straight face, every line in it is so straight, quite straight;
and your black hair and your dark eyes and your dark eyebrows. I want
that for my baby. I want a son just like you; he must be just like
you, and then I should be so happy."

As she spoke, the lines of a poetess flashed across me, indistinctly
remembered--"beauty that women seek after ... that they may give to
the world again."

Was this the reason of woman's love of beauty in men? Ah, not with all
women! Viola loved beauty, as I did, as all artists do, as they love
their art, for itself alone.

I stroked her smooth shining hair, gently, and shook my head, smiling
down upon her.

"Do you not value my love for you?" I asked.

"Oh yes, yes; you know I do."

"Well, then understand this: you would utterly and entirely lose it if
you became a mother."

Suzee shrank away from me.

"But why, Treevor? Hop Lee was so pleased with me...."

"Men have different tastes. And it is well they have, or the world
would be worse than it is. Some men like children and domesticity and
sick-nursing and childish companionship; I don't. I like health and
beauty, and love and intellect about me, and women who are straight
and slim and can inspire my pictures. That's why, Suzee, and I don't
see any reason why I shouldn't gratify my tastes as they do theirs.
There are plenty of men in the world who like being fathers of
families; the world can well allow an artist to give it his art
instead."

"Oh yes, Treevor, of course; but I am so sorry. I am so dull without a
baby."

We were sitting together in a light balcony of one of the hotels at
Tampico, and the subject of our conversation was one which had come up
many times between us lately.

Some months had slipped by