She knew that in her breast she had never wanted children. The reality,
the earthiness, the intolerable sentiment of child-bearing, the menace
to her beauty--had appalled her. She wanted to exist only as a conscious
flower, prolonging and preserving itself. Her sentimentality could cling
fiercely to her own illusions, but her ironic soul whispered that
motherhood was also the privilege of the female baboon. So her dreams
were of ghostly children only--the early, the perfect symbols of her
early and perfect love for Anthony.
In the end then, her beauty was all that never failed her. She had never
seen beauty like her own. What it meant ethically or aesthetically faded
before the gorgeous concreteness of her pink-and-white feet, the clean
perfectness of her body, and the baby mouth that was like the material
symbol of a kiss.
She would be twenty-nine in February. As the long night waned she grew
supremely conscious that she and beauty were going to make use of these
next three months. At first she was not sure for what, but the problem
resolved itself gradually into the old lure of the screen. She was in
earnest now. No material want could have moved her as this fear moved
her.
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