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swollen belly with both hands. “How many people do I have to surrender my will to?”
    “I’m not asking you to surrender anything, I’m asking you to be a part of something bigger.”
    “I’m leaving in two weeks,” she said. “I’ll not burden my child with any of this.”
    “For where? Seattle’s all but burned to the ground.”
    “Back to Chicago.”
    “You mean, back to Daddy.”
    “However you prefer to look at it, Ethan. It’s not my concern. Good luck with your new life.”
    “It’s not right, Eva! A boy needs a father.”
    “Who says it’s a boy?”
    “Whatever it is!”
    “And just what qualifies you to be a father?”
    “I’ve already qualified,” he observed, indicating her stomach. “Wouldn’t you say?”
    “Roses and moonlight are not qualifications, Ethan.”
    “And what is that supposed to mean? Just what do you think I’m doing here? Remember, Eva, it was you who walked away and turned everything upside down, you and all your new ideas. We were happy in Chicago.”
    “You were happy.”
    “We were happy in Seattle.”
    “You were, Ethan, not I.”
    Ethan jumped up from his place on the divan and did his best to pace about the little parlor. So crowded was the room that Eva was forced to press her belly against the window sill each time Ethan passed. She never got used to this thing out in front of her, this cumbersome otherness, impeding her movement, weighing her down. Darkness was beginning to set in over the colony. Eva watched as one by one the windows of the hotel began to glow with lamplight.
    “Look,” resumed Ethan. “You may think I haven’t any prospects. I know what your father thinks of me, and your brother, too. And I know what my own father thought of me, and I can still hear him laughing. Yes, I’ve made some rash decisions, some imprudent ones. Yes, I don’t always look before I leap. Yes, I nearly got jugged on accountof some miscalculations, but that’s all they were, miscalculations, simple arithmetic. I was never cut out for the work in the first place.” Ethan abandoned his pacing and plopped back down on the divan with a sigh. His hands set restlessly to work in his lap. “But, Eva, you’re wrong about me, you’re all wrong. Just who do you think is going to civilize this place? Who do you think is going to roll up their sleeves and put this place on the map? Men like your father? Stodgy old capitalists with no vision, the bed partners of senators and congressmen? You think the man that’s had every break in the world, the man that’s been handed a life, you think he’s got the gumption to carve out a life here? You think
he’s
going to transform this place with the sweat of his brow? Isn’t that why you came here? A new start? A different kind of life? One that was equitable, one that offered a man the same opportunities no matter who he—”
    “Ech!” cried Eva, turning from the window. “Men, men, men, men, men! Did it ever occur to you for one moment that a woman could be more than a helpmate, more than some chicken-tending, child-rearing Madonna of the frontier, that a woman could roll up her sleeves? Who do you think built that schoolhouse? Furthermore, who do you think conceived of it?”
    “I didn’t mean —”
    “You don’t have to mean anything. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are. This is about convention, Ethan. This is about turning a blind eye to the obvious, something all men seem to share an astounding capacity for. Especially here. If you think I’m going to settle for less than a new man, if you think I’m going to settle for a man who talks endlessly of prospects but can’t even see the potential of the woman he professes to love, a man who talks about changing the world but can’t even change his perspective, well, then, you’re sadly mistaken. I’ll no sooner put my faith in that man than in the bed partners of senators. This is not about what my father or anyone else thinks. This is about