"Physically, lovely sirens: mentally frivolous; morally lax, owing to their education, no doubt. Just the style of woman to fascinate a romantic student."
Percy laughed. "That is the prevailing idea," he said; "but it is wholly unlike the reality, as you will see."
What Dolores saw, were groups of contented looking mothers, tidy housewives, and comfortable young matrons. Women whose lives were devoted to their homes and families. Universally neat, and modest in appearance, but in no case strikingly attractive or beautiful.
"There is every indication here of happy domestic life," Percy said. "These women make good true consorts, and contented companions. They exchange their culinary and housekeeping accomplishments, and their loyalty, for a little affection, protection and support. On the whole, they lead a very pleasant sort of existence—while it lasts."
"Their position is far more enviable than that of the average wife," Dolores responded, "for if they are unhappy in their relations, they can at least get away; and I have no doubt they receive more devotion and loyalty than the majority of married women do. The position of the latter seems to me the more humiliating of the two."
Percy regarded Dolores with a grave expression.
"You are a strange girl," he said. "Yet extreme as you are in your ideas, there is much truth in what you say. I have very little respect for the husbands of my acquaintance. And still I believe God meant each man to possess one mate, and to be true to her in life and death. That is my ideal of perfect manhood—though an ideal I never expect to attain. There was a time when I imagined it possible—but now I live for the pleasure of the hour, and waste no time in theories or in moralizing. Life is too short. But of one thing I am sure, Miss King—positively sure." He paused, and she looked up expecting some serious remark. "And that is—that you are the most charming companion in the world."
On their way back to the Avenue Josephine, they saw a beautiful girl who had just shot herself in the breast, being conveyed to the hospital. Her lovely features were distorted with pain, and her agonizing groans, as they lifted her from the street where she had fallen, were heartrending to hear. Later, as they sat in Dolores' parlors, they all fell to discussing suicide.
"Terrible as it may seem," Dolores said, "I really cannot think it so great a crime as many do. We are never consulted in regard to coming into this world. Life is thrust upon us, and if, as in the case of that poor girl, perhaps, it becomes an insupportable burden, I cannot help thinking God will forgive the suffering soul that lays the burden down. I have always felt the greatest sympathy for suicides. It is a cowardly act, I own, yet it is a cowardice I can comprehend and condone. And I think God will surely be as sympathetic as a mortal."