The Streets of Ascalon

There was a silence, then Molly said, deliberately:

"You must be a very absent-minded young man. I saw your aunt for a moment this afternoon and she said that you are dining with her at Mrs. Ledwith's."

"She was mistaken – " began Sprowl quietly, but Molly cut him short with a laughing "good-bye," and hung up the receiver.

"That was Langly," she remarked, turning to Strelsa who was already dressed for dinner and who had come into Molly's boudoir to observe the hair-dressing and comprehensive embellishment of that young matron's person by a new maid on probation.

Strelsa's upper lip curled faintly, then the happy expression returned, and she watched the decorating of Molly until the maid turned her out in the perfection of grooming from crown to toe.

There was nobody in the music-room. Molly turned again to Strelsa as they entered:

"What a brute he is! – asking me to invite him here for dinner when Mary Ledwith has just arrived."

"Did he do that?"

"Yes. And his excuse was that he had an explanation to make you. What a sneaking way of doing it!"

Strelsa looked out of the dark window in silence.

Molly said: "I wish he'd go away, I never can look at him without thinking of Chester Ledwith – and all that wretched affair… Not that I am sniffy about Mary – the poor little fool… Anyway," she added naïvely, "old lady Sprowl has fixed her status and now we all know how to behave toward her."

Strelsa, arms clasped behind her back, came slowly forward from the window:

"What a sorry civilisation," she said thoughtfully, "and what sorry codes we frame to govern it."

"What?" sharply.

Strelsa looked at her, absently.

"Nobody seems to be ashamed of anything any more," she said, half to herself. "The only thing that embarrasses us is what the outside world may think of us. We don't seem to care what we think of each other."

Molly, a trifle red, asked her warmly what she meant.

"Oh, I was just realising what are the motives that govern us – the majority of us – and how primitive they are. So many among us seem to be moral throwbacks – types reappearing out of the mists of an ancient and unmoral past… Echoes of primitive ages when nobody knew any better – when life was new, and was merely life and nothing else – fighting, treacherous, cringing life which knew of nothing else to do except to eat, sleep, and reproduce itself – bully the weaker, fawn on the stronger, lie, steal, and watch out that death should not interfere with the main chance."

Molly, redder than ever, asked her again what she meant.

"I don't know, dear… How clean the woods and fields seem after a day indoors with many people."

"You mean we all need moral baths?"

"I do."

Molly smiled: "For a moment I thought you meant that I do."

Strelsa smiled, too:

"You're a good wife, Molly; and a good friend… I wish you had a baby."

"I'm – going to."

They looked at each other a moment; then Strelsa caught her in her arms.

"Really?"

Molly nodded:

"That's why I worry about Jim taking chances in his aeroplane."

"He mustn't! He's got to stop! What can he be thinking of!" cried Strelsa indignantly.

"But he – doesn't know."

"You haven't told him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I – don't know how he'll take it."

"What?"

Molly flushed: "We didn't want one. I don't know what he'll say. We didn't care for them – "

Strelsa's angry beauty checked her with its silent scorn; suddenly her pretty head fell forward on Strelsa's breast:

"Don't look that way at me! I was a fool. How was I to know – anything? I'd never had one… You can't know whether you want a baby or not until you have one… I know now. I'm crazy about it… I think it would – would kill me if Jim is annoyed – "

"He won't be, darling!" whispered Strelsa. "Don't mind what he says anyway. He's only a man. He never even knew as much about it as you did. What do men know, anyway? Jim is a dear – just the regular sort of man interested in business and sport and probably afraid that a baby might interfere with both. What does he know about it?.. Besides he's too decent to be annoyed – "

"I'm afraid – I can't stand – even his indifference – " whimpered Molly.

Strelsa, holding her clasped to her breast, started to speak, but a noise of men in the outer hall silenced her – the aviators returning from their hangars and gathering in the billiard-room for a long one before dressing.

"Wait," whispered Strelsa, gently disengaging herself – "wait just a moment – "

And she was out in the hall in an instant, just in time to touch Jim on the arm as he closed the file toward the billiard-room.

"Hello, Sweetness!" he said, pivoting on his heels and seizing her hands. "Are you coming in to try a cocktail with us?"

"Jim," she said, "I want to tell you something."

"Shoot," he said. "And if you don't hurry I'll kiss you."

"Listen, please. Molly is in the music-room. Make her tell you."

"Tell me what?"