"I really think that you have to decide yourself." He paused. "You realize, probably, that it will be like handling a double job. Charles would find it difficult to take over a new share of your present job. Most men would."
"I don't want him to. I couldn't bear to do the slightest thing to interfere with him. His career is just starting--and brilliantly. It wouldn't be right to bother him."
"Why not?" Henrietta sat up, hostility bristling in her manner. "Why not a fair sharing of this responsibility? He wanted the children, didn't he? You're as bad as some of my clinic mothers. They go out to work by the day, and they come home to work by the night. I asked one of them why she didn't let her man help with the dishes and the wash, and she said, 'Him? He's too tired after supper.' And she was earning more scrubbing than the man!"
"You wouldn't make Bill sit up with your patients, would you?" cried Catherine, hotly, "or typewrite your articles?"
"Of course Henrietta has only one job," said Bill.
"Charles has expected the children to be my job." Catherine spoke slowly. "He is in competition with other men whose wives have no other thought. Like Mrs. Thomas, for instance. You met her?"
"I've met scores of them. Most of them haven't brains enough to think with," said Henrietta, crisply. "You have. That's the trouble with you. Now think straight about this, too."
"I am trying to." Catherine's cry hung in the pleasant room, a sharp note of distress.
"It is true, as Catherine sees"--Bill leaned forward--"that the average man grows best in nurture furnished by the old pattern of wife. But you can't generalize. This is Catherine's own problem." He rose. "I wish you luck, you know. Good night." He went slowly across the hall, and closed the door of the guest room.
"You can't drag Bill into an argument," said Henrietta. "Now he's gone." She pulled her chair around to face Catherine. "I want to see you make a go of this. To see if it can be done. It's got to be, some day. I wouldn't take the chance, you see."
"But it was children I most wanted." Catherine groped among her familiar thoughts. "I didn't know I wouldn't be contented. I'm not sure I shouldn't be."
"You aren't. The signs are on you, plain as day. And you've hit straight at the roots of your trouble. I've seen it, longer than you have, and I've just been waiting. When Charles went off for his adventure, he left you space to see in!"