The Friend of Women and Other Stories by Louis Auchincloss

boy he has come to love—but he would never have consented in advance.”
    â€œWould it have made that much difference to him whose sperm was used in that tube? So long as he had to know it wasn’t his?”
    Alfreda rose, in a movement that suggested outrage, and strode across the room and back. “There was no question of a tube! Can you imagine Siegfried bringing a tube to Brunhild on her flaming mount? I wanted my baby to be born of a beautiful act. And he was!”
    â€œAnd Tommy never knew? All right, let’s keep it that way.”
    â€œBut I want Tommy to know! That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I want Stephen to grow up knowing that his father and mother produced him in an act of love! I want the whole wretched subterfuge to be blown away. I want truth! And we’re living in a world where these things are increasingly accepted. Eliot wants to recognize and be recognized by his son. And I’m betting that Tommy, in the last analysis, will be big enough to accept the situation which was created by his fault. No, don’t look at me that way, Hubert. I know it was only a biological fault. But there you are. He will continue to be daddy to Stephen. Eliot will be simply father.”
    â€œAnd Letty? What will she be?”
    â€œLetty will have all the important things. She will continue to have an important husband to share with her the important enterprises they have undertaken together. Besides, everyone knows that all has not been idyllic in the Amory household. You don’t think this was Eliot’s first affair, do you? He married her for her money—face it. And she knows it. She’s too shrewd to upset her whole applecart by a fit of manufactured jealousy.”
    â€œIt would not be manufactured. And you would not be only an unfaithful wife, Alfreda. You would have been an unfaithful friend. Never could I have believed that our old trio would end like this.”
    Alfreda’s sudden change of expression made her whole face a gape. “Why should it end, Hubert?”
    â€œBecause I could never see you again if you go through with this.”
    â€œOh, my god! I had no idea you’d take it this way!”
    â€œDidn’t you?”
    She covered her face with her hands. She was weeping. “Oh, of course I did. You’ve always been our conscience, Hubert. I knew you’d never go along. And that I was wicked, wicked, wicked. All right, what do we do now?”
    â€œNothing. There’s nothing to do. Little Stephen will do much better as people think he is than as Eliot’s known bastard.”
    â€œAnd Eliot? Who adores the boy?”
    â€œCan’t a man adore his godson? Particularly when he has no son of his own? Never mind about Eliot. I’ll keep an eye on him. Eliot is not a man, as you put it, to upset applecarts.”
    â€œAnd what do I do, Hubert, if in the days to come, I find myself hating you?”
    â€œWhen you really love someone, my dear, as I love you three girls, you do not hesitate to incur their hate if it’s for their own good.”
    With which I kissed her and took my discreet departure. My good deed had certainly been done for that day.
5
    Cora’s marriage to Larkin started smoothly enough, or so it seemed to the casual onlooker. I assumed that Ralph, a heavy and lustful man, found adequately agreeable the couplings of their early period together. I am certainly no expert in such matters, but among my male contemporaries, I have one or two who knew Ralph moderately well and who have freely opined to me, in view of what later happened, that he might have been the kind of rough and rapid lover who derived satisfaction from coition even when his partner was only passively cooperative. But what boded really ill for the future was his too articulate chagrin at the two miscarriages that Cora suffered in the first three years of their union. Instead of the sympathy that such a disappointed