for a certain period of its way, one small step in the long process. Her
heart demanded more than a passive part in the order of Nature. Her soul
needed its share from the first moment of conception in making that which
she was to give to the race. Some day a doctor would explain to her that
she was but the soil on which the fertile germ grew like a vegetable,
without her will, her consent, her creating soul! But she would reject that
coarse interpretation,--the very blasphemy of love.

And here, at this point, as she lay in the dark beneath the sighing firs,
it dawned in her dimly that something was wanting in her marriage, in the
union with the man she had chosen. She had taken him of her own free
choice; she was willingly his; she would bear his children if they came.
Her body and her soul were committed to him by choice, and by that ceremony
of marriage before the people in the chapel,--to take her part with him in
the endless process of Fate, the continuance of life.

Nevertheless, lying there in full contemplation of this new life that might
already be putting its clutch upon her life, to suck from her its own
being, she rebelled at it all. Her heart cried for her part, her very own,
for that mysterious exaltation that should make her really one with the
father in the act of creation, in the fulfilment of Love. And somehow she
knew assuredly that this could not be, not with this man by her side, not
with her husband....

She turned to him, pillowed there at her side, one hand resting fondly on
her arm. Her eyes stared at him through the darkness, trying to read the
familiar features. Did he, too, know this? Did he feel that it was
impossible ever to be really one with her? Did he suspect the terrible
defeat she was suffering now? A tear dropped from her eye and fell on the
upturned face of the sleeper. He moved, murmured, "dearest," and settled