up the north shore and in Evanston and so on and call it marriage, and call themselves respectable and useful, when they don't do a thing but live by—well, I'm still a prude, so let's call it marriage. What do you think?"
Gregg remained silent; and when she directly challenged him again, he said: "My father is a doctor, you know! up in Muskegon. A doctor sees a lot of life and sees it pretty straight but he seldom talked to me about what people call life. He did tell me, long ago, that he wanted me to know that after I was born, it became impossible for mother to have more children. Then when I was leaving home to live in Chicago, he thought maybe I might marry, I suppose, so he said to me that he wanted me to bear one thing in mind about marriage—that it wasn't made by a minister but by the man and the girl. He said for me never to think that, by taking a girl with me to a minister, I could make moral a relation which in its essence was immoral." Gregg hesitated. Then he said: "I didn't think much about that at the time or since; not until recently. I don't suppose I was able to understand it till now. It's what you've just been speaking of, Marjorie; but it's from the man's side."
And he lifted the paddle and moved the canoe. "No," said Marjorie, stopping him. "Let's go this through. I'm an only child; and I don't believe that, after I was born, anything happened to my mother but social ambition. Father, I believe—I'm going to be fair to him—at one time certainly must have wanted more children; but mother wanted to move us from Irving Park to Evanston; then she wanted to go to Europe. Well, she moved us and she went—on father's money; and once, when she came back, he'd
