Rosalie said, “Keggo, I think I could argue, but I won’t. But what I can’t imagine is the application of it in hundreds of cases—in by far the great majority of cases. Take mine. You’re not warning me, are you? I don’t see the possibility—”
Keggo said, “Darling, I’m not warning you and yet I am. I am warning you because you are a woman; and because you are a woman you are susceptible to danger. It’s what I’ve said; it’s what I would have you remember for a day perhaps to come, that it is dangerous being a woman. I’m not warning you, because there’s nothing to—well, but isn’t there? You’ve got a theory of life and you are bent upon a career in life. There’s—”
Rosalie cried, “Well, but there you are, Keggo. No comeback, no return tickets—well, I don’t want to come back; I don’t want a return ticket.”
“You might. You never know. Suppose you ever did?”
“But you can’t suppose it. Why ever should I?”
“Suppose you wanted to marry?”
Rosalie laughed. The thing immediately lost reality. “Well, suppose the incredible. Suppose I did. There’d be no comeback wanted there. I could perfectly well marry and still keep my theory of life; I could perfectly well marry and still keep on in my career—and most certainly I would still keep on. Why, that is my theory of life, as you call it, or a very outstanding principle of it. There’s nothing to me more detestable in the whole business than the idea that because a woman marries she therefore must give up her work. That’s what is the reason the boarding house and every boarding house and every home and street and city swarms with derelicts—with derelict women—just because their lives are all planned as blind alley occupations, marriage at the end of the alley, no need to do anything, no need to be anything because it’s only a blind alley you’re in. When you reach the end—you reach the end! That’s it, Keggo. You reach the end. You’re a woman, therefore for you—the end!”
She laughed again. She was returning Keggo’s vehemence without embarrassment upon the subject that had made return difficult. She cried, “I’ve got you now, Keggo. I really have. You say they don’t issue return tickets to women. No. Perhaps they don’t; but I’ll tell you where they book them all to—from the cradle to a terminus.”
Keggo smiled and would have spoken. But Rosalie was pleased with her adroit turning of metaphors. She repeated “To a terminus. Well, I’ve booked beyond, Keggo.” She laughed again. “And then the idea of marriage for me! I’ve granted the preposterous just for the sake of the argument and just to floor the argument. But you know, you know perfectly well from all our talks, even so far back as at the Sultana’s, that it’s simply too grotesque! Marriage, for me! Why, if a million men came to me on their bended knees, each with a million pounds on their backs you know perfectly well that I’d just feel sick. Tame cats, tabby cats, tomcats, Cheshire cats, wild cats, stray cats,—I’m not going to set up a cats’ home. No thanks.”
So Rosalie had the laugh of that evening.