"I do understand, Helmeth, but what I'm trying to tell you is that I can't go through with it. Those are the things that belong to the woman, that it takes all the woman's time to do the way their mother would have them done, and for me the woman has been swamped in the genius. Oh, I don't say that I'm not a better actress for having tried so long to be merely a woman, for being able even now, to know all that you mean when you say 'woman'; but there it is. I am an actress and I can't leave off being one just by saying so." "And I can't leave off being a proper father to my girls. I owe them the things we've been talking about just as I owe them a living. I suppose I should have married for their sakes, supposing I could get anybody to have me, even if I hadn't found you. And I don't want finding you to mean anything but the best to them." I had nothing to say to that, and he went back to a thought that had often been between us. "We ought to have married when we were young," he insisted as though somehow that made a better case of it, "if you hadn't begun you wouldn't have been called on to leave it off." "The point is that it won't leave _me_. Genius--I don't know what it is except that it is nothing to be conceited about because you can't help it--isn't a thing you can pick up or lay down at your pleasure; it's a possession." I could see that he didn't altogether follow me, that he was not very far removed, and that only by his admiration for me, from the Taylorvillian idea that to speak of yourself as a genius was to pay yourself an unwarrantable compliment, and that the most I could get him to understand of the meaning of my work, was what grew out of his being a most competent workman himself. He went back to the original proposition. "Does that mean, then, that you are not going to marry me?" "It means that I'm not going to leave the stage to do it." "It seems to me to mean that you don't love me as you have professed to. Oh, I know how women love ... good women." "Helmeth!" "I beg your pardon, Olivia." We stood aghast at what we had brought upon ourselves; across the breach of dissension we rushed together with effacing passion. After all, I believe I should have gone with him if he had had the wit to know that the point at which a woman is most prepared for yielding is the next instant after she has just stated the insuperable objection. Whether he knew or not, the whole of his outer attention was taken up with the purchase of pump fittings. Understand that I didn't for a moment suppose that I had lost him, that I didn't believe anything but that I could go to him at any moment if the whim seized me, that I couldn't in reason pull him back if the need of him arose. I finished out my vacation at resorts up and down the California coast, warm with the certainty that I should see him in New York the next winter. CHAPTER VIII