"
"You mean?"
"Children," said Spence crisply.
"I do not care for children."
The professor's soberness vanished. "Oh--what a whopper!" he
exclaimed.
"I mean, I do not want children of my own."
"But supposing you were to develop a desire for them later on?"
She nodded thoughtfully.
"I might," she acknowledged. "But in my case it would be merely the
outcropping of a feminine instinct, easily suppressed. I am not at
all afraid of it. Look at all the women who are perfectly happy
without children."
"Hum!" said the professor. "I am looking at them. But I find them
unconvincing. There are a few, however, of whom what you say is
true. You may be one of them. How about Sami?"
"Sami? Oh, Sami is different. He is more like a mountain imp than a
child. I don't think Sami would seem real anywhere but here. If
anyone were to try to transplant him he might vanish altogether.
Poor little chap--how terribly he would miss me!" finished Desire
artlessly.
She had accepted the possibility, then! Spence's heart gave a leap
and was promptly reproved for leaping. This was not, he reminded
himself, an affair of the heart at all. It was a coldly-thought-out,
hard-headed business proposition. Such a proposition as his father's
son might fittingly conceive. The thing to do now was to stride on
briskly and avoid sentiment.
"Then as we seem to agree upon the essentials," he said, "there
remains only one concrete difficulty, your father.
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