"She is such a clever girl," she would say. "A good musician, of course. My husband says she could take a first easily in almost any subject. I am sure she will make a good wife, just the kind of girl to make a man successful. We have often been surprised that she has not married before, but of course she is a girl who could only live happily with a good brain. It does make such a difference."
Everything she said led back to her own bliss and exceptional fortune; and while René gave her due homage for her motherhood, her wifedom, her gracious happy home, yet he came almost to hate these things without knowing that it was because they were securely barred in. Yet he could not keep away nor refrain from his attempts to storm the citadel.
He would try through Smallman, who was even more exasperating. He seemed to divine that his pupil was groping after some reassurance of human beauty, but he would hint darkly at the difficulties of married life, generalize about the simplicity of human needs, whisper of the revelation of fatherhood, and, just as he had René sitting forward in excited anticipation of the longed-for marvel, he would double and turn aside into the discussion of economic problems, or the unsatisfactory nature of the academic life in Thrigsby. And then, with the children, René would see that Smallman could never enter into their games or their minds as thoroughly as himself.
On the whole he preferred George's gross swaggering over his paternity, and there was a sure satisfaction in watching his sister-in-law suckle her baby. But there again George and his wife took upon themselves an excessive credit for the achievement, hoarded it, invested it in everybody whom they could get to take it, seeming to use the child as a means of gaining admiration for themselves. They seemed to be incapable of recovering from the astonishment of anything so natural happening to themselves, and they too, a little more exuberantly and less charmingly, barred René out.
"By Jove!" George would say, "there is nothing like it. It's wonderful what you can do without when you've got that. And, as I was saying to Elsie, I can't make out what swells do who have a nurse. I can't tell you how jolly glad I was when the monthly went and we could have it all to ourselves."