I presently broke the silence with a bold, perhaps an inexcusable question,
“Elodia, do you intend ever to marry?”
It was a kind of challenge, and I held myself rigid, waiting for her answer, which did not come immediately. She turned her eyes toward me slowly without moving her head, and our glances met and gradually retreated, as two opposing forces might meet and retreat, neither conquering, neither vanquished. Hers went back into space, and she replied at last as if to space,—as if the question had come, not from me alone, but from all the voices that urge to matrimony.
“Why should I marry?”
“Because you are a woman,” I answered promptly.
“Ah!” her lip curled with a faint smile, “your reason is very general, but why limit it at all, why not say because I am one of a pair which should be joined together?”
The question was not cynical, but serious; I scrutinized her face closely to make sure of that before answering.
“I know,” I replied, “that here in Mars there is held to be no difference in the nature and requirements of the sexes, but it is a false hypothesis, there is a difference,—a vast difference! all my knowledge of humanity, my experience and observation, prove it.”
“Prove it to you, no doubt,” she returned, “but not to me, because my experience and observation have been the reverse of yours. Will you kindly tell me,” she added, “why you think I should wish to marry any more than a man,—or what reasons can be urged upon a woman more than upon a man?”
An overpowering sense of helplessness fell upon me,—as when one has reached the limits of another’s understanding and is unable to clear the ground for further argument.