Whenever a woman without children loved an animal or a cause or anything else – anything else besides that which she ought to love most in the world, that which she ought to spend all her days trying and longing for – it was thought to be a substitute for what she did not have. No matter that all three of us had looked upon the Creature with pride and joy; I alone was not its creator, or its artist, or its inventor, but merely a mother, most qualified to care for it not due to any intelligence or observation on my part, but due to the perversion of some natural urge.
