"No, no," I answered soothingly. "Of course you don't." Hastily I changed my tactics. "What do you think other women will say, the ones who know you as a feminist, as one who believes that women should earn their own living in spite of the handicap of bearing and rearing children, when they see that you cannot live out the theory you advocate? They will say, 'That's all right. She earns her own living. Why shouldn't she? What else has she to do? She hasn't any children. If she had my three, now—'"
"Three!" exclaimed my mother. "That would take ten years out of my life."
"Never mind three," I said quickly, feeling I had gone too far. "You ought at least to have me—one, I mean." Let my brothers and sisters argue their own cases. I had enough of a task in presenting my own.
"Some day I suppose I shall have one," my mother murmured. "To-day, however, matters are in such a state that it takes all of us intellectuals to clear the path for others to follow. We must sacrifice our intimate desires."
"Do you really want me then?" I cried happily. "Have me, have me! I will carry on the torch for you! Who can do it so well as your own child? Your immortality!" I stopped abruptly. My mother had started writing an article on a topic which this conversation had stimulated. I felt that she was exploiting me, never letting me become myself, but only using me for her own purposes. I sulked. She would be sorry some day when she was an old, old lady and had no dear little grandchildren.
Another time I did not let her off so easily. "It isn't that I want to be just for myself," I pleaded. "I am more than myself." The words came naturally to me from a play my mother had just seen, a play OF THE FUTURE it was called. "I am the link between you and countless generations. Unless you have irreproachable reasons" (my mother became uneasy at this) "you are denying wilfully to the long line of those who projected you into a world in which you are glad to live their further projection through me into new and countless generations." Eloquently I threw out the challenge, just like the lady lecturer in the play: "Dare you defy the strength of the plasm within you seeking to throw out its force into new individuals to replace you in the great scheme of evolution?"
I thought my arguments finished. Time passed. I felt myself
