As she had no notion of Marvin’s being engaged in virtually that search, her will to refuse him continued to lose weight by fits and starts, like actinium.

On the afternoon of Sunday, the twenty-seventh, she restlessly rowed round into the creek after white lilies. She gathered a score. Then, as she leaned from the dory and dipped her arm into the brown water, she caught sight of a speck of green gelatin on the stem of a lily, and lifted it in.

It was hydra, and about ready to bud. She placed it in her cup, and presently the daughter parted from the mother.

Hydra was virtually immortal, and would go on living as long as it could find food, which might be for a thousand years, and every time it was a little short of food it would produce another daughter. Such immortality was not worth having. Life that was worth anything was precarious.

And the history of life on earth was the history of steadily decreasing fertility. Species ran out, families ran out, but always in the effort to get a finer product. A water lily, living but for days, was infinitely better than hydra.