“And so you came to Chicago....” “Yes, and became a settlement-worker. It seems a pitiful climax to my story, doesn’t it? And yet, if one lives in twentieth-century America instead of in Ancient Greece, what is one to do? It seemed to me a good pagan life, to try to bring about a better world for everybody—a world in which beauty would count for something.... At one time I thought I was a socialist, but I found that I couldn’t bear to attend stuffy meetings, and that I couldn’t understand Marx and didn’t want to. And I wasn’t interested in woman suffrage, either. My life had to be centred around something personal. So—” “So you taught those children how to play....” “It was the Greekliest thing I knew to do.... If Aspasia had been born in Springfield, Illinois, _she_ might have taken a class in a Chicago settlement!” Rose-Ann said defiantly—and then, doubtfully, “What do you think of it all?” “I don’t know,” he said—“it leaves me bewildered—except that I think you’re a wonderful child.” “It’s you who are wonderful,” she said, “to understand. I _am_ a child, I suppose—and I want to stay one always. I don’t want to grow up. That’s very foolish, isn’t it? Do you know that horrible habit some married people have of addressing each other as ‘Pa’ and ‘Ma’—as soon as they have a baby, I mean? I suppose it’s meant as a joke. And I suppose it’s a joke, too, when a man refers to his wife as ‘the old woman.’ When I was a little girl, I vowed to myself that no man would ever have the right to call me his ‘old woman.’ Or ... but then, we shan’t ever have any children, shall we? You remember what I said—the talk we had in the hospital that day. I meant that, Felix.” Felix’s mind was fumbling for the lost thread of their discourse. Rose-Ann’s talk had a disconcerting way of suddenly leaping from one idea to another. How did they come to be talking about children? She had brought them in, without rhyme or reason, more than once tonight. And each time he had remembered with a sense of discouragement and vague shame that moment at the hospital when he had not had the courage to tell her that he wanted to be—everything that it seemed he need not be after all. He wanted now to say something—but what could he say? Some other time, perhaps, when he had a chance to think things out more clearly.... It did not need to be settled now. “Why,” he said confusedly, “we did talk about it, yes. I don’t suppose we can afford to—” He was going to add “right away,” but Rose-Ann interrupted him. “Oh, dear!” she said, “I’ve forgotten—I promised to let my father know our address, as soon as we found a place to live, so he could come and see us, and I forgot all about it! Felix, will you bring me pencil and paper, please? I’ll write to him now.”