'GOD'S PEACE' 349
sowing his wild oats. To begin with, I don't be- lieve they have as many to sow as people imagine. No, my confidence has quite another reason, which I thought out for myself, and which I think is true enough. In all your confessions I have sought in vain for— /Ae child. You have spent many en- thusiastic words in describing the beauty of your mistresses. You have furnished them with all the virtues. But one thing you denied them — the right to bear your children. Perhaps you did this quite unconsciously, but to me it seems that you most carefully avoided the question of children, in which I see the beginning and end of all true love. What value can a woman have for a man when he does not wish her to give him the fruit of their embrace. For after all this is the great wonder, the joy beyond all joy, in the embrace between man and woman, that there meets their love's longing for eternity, the longing to know them- selves united into a far future through the children, and again their children, and so on through the ages. If I lay in your arms and felt your love waver for fear of the child, I should feel it a deep shame. I should think you found me good enough for sensual pleasure and for fleeting passion, but that you would not honour me by allowing me to bear your embodiment of eternity.
' While now I can be proud and confident, be- cause I believe I am the first whom you have wished to see as your children's mother, and I feel no envy of your past, or of the women who
