Catherine waited while the waitress served the next course. Bill's words had evoked a thought clearly from the churning within her; she held it until the waitress had gone, and then spoke,
"You mean, exactly, that he wishes my radius to be his desires, his welfare, his future?"
"That's his old pattern. Bound to hang on, Catherine. Because it is so flattering, so pleasant. Isn't it what we all wish, anyway? Someone living within our limits?"
"Do they?" Catherine shook her head. "I don't want Charles to have nothing but me in his life. Aren't women hardier? Since they've never had that--it is a sort of human sacrifice, isn't it? Men are like vines! Did you know vines wouldn't grow well, some of them, unless you sacrifice to them? Bones and flesh. 'If you have an old hen,' said the nursery man, when I asked him about our Actinidia in Maine, 'bury her close to the roots. Then the vine will shoot up.' And it did!"
"You would make over the old saying about sturdy oaks, wouldn't you?"
"Don't make fun of me. Perhaps I can discover something which will change the world!" She stared intently at Bill. "You--" she hesitated. "You live without that human sacrifice, Bill. You aren't an Actinidia."
"And so, perhaps, I know why men wish it." Bill pushed to one side his untouched salad. "Without any question now of its fairness or justice to women like Henrietta, or you. In the first place, it is convenient, practically so; smooths down all the details of living. But especially, it drops a painted screen between man and the distressing futility of his life. A man with a family and a regular wife, old style, doesn't often have to face his own emptiness. He feels important. He hurries around at his work, and if doubt pricks a hole in that screen, the picture painted there is intricate enough to hide the hole. He has something to keep his machinery in action. If by day his little ego is deflated, there is, to change my figure, free air at home to blow him full again."
"You sound as if you thought all wives were adoring and humble," said Catherine.
"Some of them used to be." Bill grinned at her, and lifted his hand abruptly in a signal to the waitress. "This is supposed to be a party," he apologized, "and not a lecture by me. Tell me more about what you've been doing."