"No, you don't think of me," she insisted. "You think only of--of _it_. You're worried about me as a mother and not as a wife. You are!" Stainton protested, grieved to the heart; but she would not hear him. "It's as if you were a stock-farmer," she said, the tears in her velvety eyes, "and I were only your favorite thoroughbred in foal." This simile he found revolting. It required all his masculine philosophy satisfactorily to account for her use of it, and, even when that had been applied, he reprimanded her, with kindness, but with decisiveness also. It was some time before she begged his pardon and condemned herself; some time before he soothed her and told her, what she hated to hear, that her words had risen not from herself but from her condition. They went to Marguery's, when the doctor returned to Paris, rather worn out by their week of sightseeing; but they found the crowded restaurant pleasantly diverting. The chatter of the diners, the scurrying of the waiters, and the gratification of the leather-covered seat from which, across a shining table, they faced Boussingault, quieted them and made them forget for a space the subject that one of them was weary of remembering. Then, by some mischance, Stainton hit upon a fatal topic. "Doctor," he said, "I am sure you can give me some authoritative information on a matter that I have read a little of. I mean the question of the decrease in the French birth-rate and the efforts to stop it and build up not only a larger race but a race of the best stock." He saw instantly that he had struck the little man's hobby. Dr. Boussingault sat with one thick knee covered by his serviette and thrust into the aisle for the _garcons_ to stumble over. His dark eyes, keen and expressive, were shaped like wide almonds and, unobscured by any vestige of lashes, perpetually snapped and twinkled through his glasses in a lively disregard of the phlegmatic indications given by the dark bags beneath them. "The most healthy sign in France to-day," he said. "Absolutely." "You mean the effort to increase and better the stock?" "No. One thousand no's. The success in decreasing it." "My dear sir----" The doctor waved his hands. He drank no alcohol, he said; only some wine of the country, red; but of this, heavily diluted by water, he was drinking copiously. "Attend, monsieur. I know well, my God, these good people who go to England and have international congresses and, between the dinners given by Her Grace of Dulpuddle and the lawn parties, when one permits them to enter the park of the Castle Cad, indulge in a debauch of scientific verbosity. But yes; I know them! I have been to their meetings and heard one of these savants talk while ten snored. 'Nature, nature!' they cry, and all the time, all the time they forget Nurture. What do I to them say? I, Paul Achille Boussingault?" The doctor struck his heart, and breathed: "_I_ say one word: 'Environment!'--and they silence themselves."