The barren
woman was despised. All that is changing. This movement is adding
impulse to it.
ST. HERBERT Movements do not alter instincts.
GEOFFREY But they do. Ever since man emerged from the jungle he
has been shedding his instincts--shaping them to new desires.
Where do you find this all-prevailing instinct towards maternity?
Among the women of society, who sacrifice it without a moment's
hesitation to their vanity--to their mere pleasures? The middle-
class woman--she, too, is demanding "freedom." Children, servants,
the home!--they are too much for her "nerves." And now there comes
this new development, appealing to the intellectual woman. Is
there not danger of her preferring political ambition, the
excitement of public life, to what has come to be regarded as the
"drudgery" of turning four walls into a home, of peopling the
silence with the voices of the children? [He crosses to the table-
-lays his hand again upon the open letter.] How do you know that
this may not be her answer--"I have no children.
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