“O, Elodia! I cannot talk to you,” I replied. “It is true, as you say, that our conclusions are based upon diverse premises; we are so wide apart in our views on this subject that what I would say must seem to you the merest cant and sentiment.”
“I think not; you are an honest man,” she rejoined with an encouraging smile, “and I am greatly interested in your philosophy of marriage.”
I acknowledged her compliment.
“Well,” I began desperately, letting the words tumble out as they would, “it is woman’s nature, as I understand it, to care a great deal about being loved,—loved wholly and entirely by one man who is worthy of her love, and to be united to him in the sacred bonds of marriage. To have a husband, children; to assume the sweet obligations of family ties, and to gather to herself the tenderest and purest affections humanity can know, is surely, indisputably, the best, the highest, noblest, province of woman.”
“And not of man?”
“These things mean the same to men, of course,” I replied, “though in lesser degree. It is man’s office—with us—to buffet with the world, to wrest the means of livelihood, of comfort, luxury, from the grudging hand of fortune. It is the highest grace of woman that she accepts these things at his hands, she honors him in accepting, as he honors her in bestowing.”
I was aware that I was indulging in platitudes, but the platitudes of Earth are novelties in Mars.
Her eyes took a long leap from mine to the vague horizon line. “It is very strange,” she said, “this distinction you make, I cannot understand it at all. It seems to me that this love we are talking about is simply one of the strong instincts implanted in our common nature. It is an essential of our being. Marriage is not, it is a social institution; and just why it is incumbent upon one sex more than upon the other, or why it is more desirable for one sex than the other, is inconceivable to me. If either a man, or a woman, desires the ties you speak of, or if one has the vanity to wish to found a respectable family, then, of course, marriage is a necessity,—made so by our social and political laws. It is a luxury we may have if we pay the price.”
I was shocked at this cold-blooded reasoning, and cried, “O, how can a woman say that! have you no tenderness, Elodia? no heart-need of these ties and affections,—which I have always been taught are so precious to woman?”
She shrugged her shoulders, and, leaning forward a little, clasped her hands about her knees.