"Pa," Martie said suddenly, "I wonder if you believe that!" She stood up now, facing him, her breath coming quickly. It seemed to Martie that she had been waiting all her life to say this: hoping for the opportunity, years ago, dreading the necessity now. "I wonder if you believe," she said, trembling a little, "that you--and half the other fathers and mothers in the world--are really in the right! I didn't ask to be born; Sally didn't ask to be born. We didn't choose our sex. We came and we grew up, and went to school, and we had clothing and food enough. But then--THEN!--when we must really begin to live, you suddenly failed us. Oh, you aren't different from other fathers, Pa. It's just that you don't understand! What help had we then in forming human relationships? When did you ever tell us why this young man was a possible husband, and that one was not? I wanted to work, I wanted to be a nurse, or a bookkeeper--you laughed at me! I had a bitter experience--an experience that you could have spared me, and Lydia before me, if you had cared!--and I had a girl's hell to bear; I had to go about among my friends ASHAMED! You didn't comfort me; you didn't tell me that if I learned a little French, and brushed up my hair, and bought white shoes, the NEXT young man wouldn't throw me over for a prettier and more accomplished woman! You were ashamed of me! Sally, just as ignorant as Teddy is this minute, dashed into marriage; she was afraid, as I was, of being a dependent old maid! She married a good man--but that wasn't your doing! I married a bad man, a man whose selfishness and cruelty ruined all my young days, crushed the youth right out of me, and he might be living yet, and Teddy and I tied to him yet but for a chance! I suffered dependence and hunger--yes, and death, too," said Martie, crying now, "just because you didn't give me a livelihood, just because you didn't make me, and Sally, and Lydia, too, useful citizens! You did Len; why didn't you give us the same chance you gave Len? Len had college; he not only was encouraged to choose a profession, but he was MADE to! Our profession was marriage, and we weren't even prepared for that! I didn't know anything when I married. I didn't know whether Wallace was fit to be a husband or a father! I didn't know how motherhood came--all those first months were full of misgivings and doubts! I knew I was giving him all I had, and that financially I was just where I had been--worse off than ever, in fact, for there were the children to think of! Why didn't I have some work to do, so that I could have stepped into it, when bitter need came, and my children and I were almost starving? What has Len cost you, five thousand dollars, ten thousand? What did that statue to Grandfather Monroe cost you? Sally and I have never cost you anything but what we ate and wore!" Malcolm had risen, too, and they were glaring at each other. The old man's putty-coloured face was pale, and his eyes glittered with fury.