“You’re wrong, mother. You’re wrong. It’s the so-called respect that’s skin-deep. Men will tell you that the ideal woman is the good wife and mother, but you try being a good wife and mother and you’re pretty soon a deadly bore; while the little half moral Dellas and Flisses are the women men give up things for and like to be with.” Mrs. Warner forced herself to a question. She did not answer Cecily’s tirade, but struck at the root of it. “Is anything seriously wrong between you and Dick?” “No. Nothing seriously wrong, I suppose. I suppose I wanted marriage to get deeper and better. It’s getting thinner and almost tawdry. I wanted Dick to be content with it and me. And he’s restless. He likes all this excitement and all these noisy people that I don’t like. He doesn’t want to stay home with me and the children.” “Surely he doesn’t neglect you, dear.” “Ah, it’s not so tangible. It’s simply that I don’t satisfy.” “Cecily, darling, aren’t you imagining all this?” “I thought so, mother. Then I didn’t think so, but I tried to think so. Then I knew that I wasn’t. You see, mother, I’m growing up. I’m trying to live by the ideals I was taught were the ones to live by, but I can’t find any one else living by them. At first I thought Dick thought as I did--wanted to live as I do. He doesn’t. Secretly he thinks I’m stupid.” Her mother tried to laugh reassuringly. “That’s so foolish. You know better than that, Cecily. I can’t see that you’ve any real grievance. You’re going through a hard period now. But the babies will grow older and all this----” “Suppose I have more babies.” Mrs. Warner hesitated. “Are you quite strong enough now, I wonder?” “Oh,” cried Cecily, “you are evading me, too. Are there no rights and wrongs? Why was I brought up to believe in right and wrong? Is everything compromise? Babies, marriage, Dellas?” Fine lines stood out in Mrs. Warner’s face. “I never had your fundamental courage or strength,” she said, “but there was a time when I did believe in very black wrong and very white right. That was when I married your father. He was a brilliant man and I loved him, not as I love your dear stepfather, but differently. I don’t let myself remember that first part of my love. I can’t, even yet. But your father was a poor husband; he was a poor father; he was not honest with me; he was not even faithful. When I found that out--he told me--I said that I would not let it kill me, but it nearly did. The first had seemed so beautiful that to find it was not even real----” Her voice dragged, weighted even now with the horrible discovery. Cecily, her eyes half closed in imagining the pain, listened. “Since then I have believed that most things are compromise. All the happiness in my life, the real happiness, has come through compromise. All the pain through the lack of it. You have so much more than I had with your father. Dick is good. I know he loves you. I know he is faithful to you.”