“It’s a human taste, my dear Loring,” replied he. “It’s as common as the taste for bread. All the men have it. As for the women they like nothing so well. Having one’s boots licked is the highest human joy. Next comes licking boots.”
“You don’t believe that?” said I, for his tone was almost too bitter for jest.
“You aren’t acquainted with your kind, old man,” retorted he.
“I don’t know the kind you know,” said I. And then I remembered my wife and my daughter. There must be truth in what Armitage had said; for, my beautiful wife and my sweet daughter, both looking so proud—surely they could not be rare exceptions in their insensibility to what seemed to me elemental self-respect.
“You don’t know your kind,” he went on, “because you don’t indulge in cringing and don’t encourage it. You’re like the cold, pure-minded woman who goes through the world imagining it a chaste and austere place because her very face silences and awes sensuality. You are part of the small advance guard of a race that is to come.” He grinned satirically. “Perhaps you’ll drop out in the next few months. We’ll see.”
When the silence was again broken, it was broken by me. “Do you know a school kept by a woman named Ryper?” I inquired.
“Sure I do,” replied he. He gave me a shrewd laughing glance. “The daughter isn’t learning anything?”
“Nothing but mischief,” said I.
“That’s what Ryper’s for. But what does it matter? Why should a woman learn anything? They’re of no consequence. The less a man has to do with them the better off he will be.”
“They’re of the highest consequence,” said I bitterly. “They have the control of the coming generation.”