No. Who put such silly nonsense into your head? Don't let that
stupid fable hide from you the beautiful truth of birth. That is an
absurd story, Zoe, invented by those to whom the most sublime fact in
the world seems nasty. Babies are born, dear--out of lo--out of the
union of the sexes."
"Lilly, you are all trembling."
She took her daughter's face between her hands, her eyes probing and
yearning down into the brilliantly blue ones.
"It is because I want to keep life clean and beautiful for you. Nothing
that is natural is ugly, Zoe. It's only when we make something dark and
shameful of nature's methods that we are apt to misunderstand and
to err."
"Did you err, Lilly?"
"How?"
"With him?"
"Who?"
"Penny."
"Zoe! Zoe! why will you refer to him that way? Yes, I erred out of
ignorance, the kind I want to save you from. In my case your father had
to pay for the ignorance of a girl who married him without knowing what
marriage meant. Ignorance!"
"How funny to hear that--word."
"What word?"
"Father."
"Zoe! Zoe! Have I made it clear to you about him? How good--how
kind--how wronged by me?"
"You are always so afraid I won't understand that.
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