"It's like this, Larry: I suppose life is a muddle for everyone and we all do have to learn as we go on--nothing can keep us from that, not even marriage, can it?" No reply came to this. "It's like light coming in spots, and then those spots can never be really dark again although all the rest may be. You think of those spots as bright and sure when all else is--is lost. That is the way it has been with me." "Gee!" Larry shrugged his shoulders. "Larry, you _must_ try to understand!" Mary-Clare was growing desperate. "Then, try to talk American." "I am, Larry. _My_ American. That's the trouble--there is more than _one_ kind, you know. Larry, it was all wrong, my marrying you even for dear Dad's sake. If he had been well and we could have talked it over, he would have understood. I should have understood for him that last night. Even the letters should not have mattered, they must not matter now!" This, at least, was comprehensible. "Well, you _did_ marry me, didn't you?" Larry flung out. "You're my wife, aren't you?" Correcting mistakes was not in Larry's plan of life. "I--why, yes, I am, Larry, but a wife means more than one thing, doesn't it?" This came hopelessly. "Not to me. What's your idea?" Larry was relieved at having the conversation run along lines that he could handle with some degree of common sense. "Well, Larry, marriage means a good many things to me. It means being kind and making a good home--a real home, not just a place to come to. It means standing by each other, even if you can't have everything!" Just for one moment Larry was inclined to end this shilly-shallying by brute determination. He was that type of man. What did not come within the zone of his own experience, did not exist for him except as obstacles to brush aside. It was a damned bad time, he thought, for Mary-Clare to act up her book stuff. A man, home after a three months' absence, tired and worn out, could not be expected, at close upon midnight, to enjoy this outrageous nonsense that had been sprung upon him. He must put an end to it at once. He discarded the cave method. Of course that impulse was purely primitive. It might simplify the whole situation but he discarded it. Mary-Clare's outbursts were like Noreen's "dressing up"--and bore about the same relation in Larry's mind. "See here," he said suddenly, fixing his eyes on Mary-Clare--when Larry asserted himself he always glared--"just what in thunder do you mean?" The simplicity of the question demanded a crude reply. "I'm not going to have any more children." Out of the maze of complicated ideals and gropings this question and answer emerged, devastating everything in their path. They meant one, and only one, thing to Larry Rivers.