“I doubt if nature considers our rights, one way or the other. As for his missing his father, in childhood and afterwards, it’s perfectly true, and I wouldn’t try to gloss over the fact. I know, too, that you are grieving for the home you dreamed of having. Nobody could pretend you are as happy as you deserve to be. But even so, you ought to have peace of mind. Dear girl, it might be so much worse!”

“How possibly?”

“Why, he might have married you.”

“You think that would have been worse!”

“Here, give me that baby again. He’s much quieter with me, and I’ll tell him some things he can profit by later … Yes, much worse, considering Damastor’s character. If he had been a great lover, the kind we invent but usually don’t meet, the lasting kind, then to lose him would have been as tragic as you think it is—but then you wouldn’t have lost him. He was a great lover at first, wasn’t he? Only he couldn’t keep it up. That’s not his fault—nor yours; it’s simply the way he is. You don’t know what it would have been like to live with him, year after year, when he had ceased to be your lover and was drawing on his reserves of character to be your husband. Of course he would have been kind to you—you’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you!—but even with him there, you’d find yourself deserted by the man you yearned for. A stranger, with a haunting resemblance to your lover—that’s what you’d be living with. Now you are far better off. Not in the general opinion of society, but really so. The boy is the child of your love, and your love is fortunately bereaved, when it might have been tarnished or worn dull. Your sorrow, too, is bright and clean-cut … Adraste, this young man will never like curtain lectures; he’s going asleep. Shall I put him in his crib?”

“Please—and take his thumb out.”

“It’s all right—it’s in again … I think you’re a lucky girl, Adraste, to have both your love and your sorrow pure.”

“I don’t see any luck in having sorrow, pure or impure.”