“I will tell you what it all means,” said Ben, slowly; “it means that it’s a land and a life for men, and not for women. We men gain in every particular: no more small clerkships for us, no more imprisonment in airless offices; but out-of-door freedom, and our own lives to ourselves, and our own land. That is what it all means to us. To you women—well—”
“Well?” she said impatiently.
“To you women it is altogether something different,” he continued, “and unless you all know how to love desperately, there is not much to redeem the life out here for you.”
She laughed bitterly.
“No, apparently not much,” she said. “So here, as everywhere, the women come off the worst.”
“It seems to be so,” he answered reluctantly.
“Unless we can manage to love desperately,” she said, in bitter scorn, “and then even Southern California can become a paradise to us. Is that what you think?”
“I think that love and friendship can make things easier, even on a lonely ranch in Southern California,” Ben replied.
“The men are to have eternal freedom from airless offices and small clerkships, and to enjoy out-of-door lives, and revel in the possession of their ranches,” Hilda continued; “and the women are to do work to which they have never been accustomed at home, are to drudge and drudge day after day in an isolated place without a soul to talk to, and their only compensation is to love desperately. A pretty picture indeed! Oh, well, it is folly of me to talk of it, perfect folly, and to you of all people, Bob’s friend.”
“Better to Bob’s friend than to Bob himself,” Ben said quietly.