Sometimes Myrtle acted toward her as though she had willfully chosen celibacy. She hadn't chosen it. She had never craved a career like some women, never sought one. She was fond of children. Children were fond of her. It seemed to her a queer sort of accident that there existed no little child anywhere to call her mother.
This year, in view of the war, Myrtle had made Constance's activities in life seem a little more trivial than ever before. Myrtle was to become the mother of a third child in a few months; and though she wanted the child,—would have had it, war or no war,—she felt that she was performing for her country the most patriotic service that a woman could. She made the socks which Constance was knitting, and the two days a week at the Red Cross rooms, at home, which Constance had boasted of a little at first, appear like a child's contribution.
Constance arrived home about eight o'clock that evening. When she got out of the taxicab in front of the big, high, city house (it was brick and white mortar, with a modern basement entrance) and stood waiting to be let in by one of the servants, she was conscious of a vague longing for something more demanding of her in the way of devotion and sacrifice than this big, easy,
