"He doesn't love her," protested Janet.
"As if that made any difference! Every man needs a woman to represent him in social life and to advertise the dignity and solidity of his own rooftree. Any woman who can do these things satisfactorily qualifies as a suitable wife. Men, you see, are more conventional than women. Or perhaps I should say, more businesslike."
"Businesslike!" Cornelia interposed. "Say disgusting, and you'll be much nearer the truth. Didn't I tell you, Janet," she continued, "that men think of women in only one way—and that a beastly one?"
"On the contrary, they think of women in two ways," contended Lydia in her drawling Southern tongue. "To a man, all womankind is divided into two groups: the woman who stands for his home, and all the others—the women who stand for his pleasure. The one woman is a necessity; all the others a luxury. Every man gets the first at any cost, and then bids for one or more of the second, if he has the price."
"Don't be bizarre and crude, Lydia," said Cornelia, not relishing this analysis in Janet's presence.
"Crude?" said Lydia, repelling the charge as melodramatically as it was made. "It is not I who am crude. It is man. It is man who divides our whole sex crassly into these two groups. It is man who sees in every woman either a housekeeper or a wanton. It is man who fixes a trade price for affairs of the heart and rates marriages by their market value. Call this crude, if you like! Or call it an incurable blindness to the differing blend of vital forces that makes each woman unique. In this respect, how unlike men are to us, who see in every man a new, mystic union of protector, lover and father of our children!"
"The new trinity!" chanted Cornelia, with a significant laugh. "But I'm sure, dear Lydia, that not every woman has your gift for discovering this mystic trinity in so many unique specimens of the other sex."
"Dear Cornelia, you flatter me. My only advantage over other women lies in the prudence which caused me to get a husband before I set out to make the discoveries you allude to."
"Don't let us talk about marriage as it exists today," said Cornelia, parrying the blow as best she could. "Marriage is so banal."
"Yes, and so convenient," drawled Lydia, who reluctantly supported her husband in idleness and luxury. "Also, so expensive. Husbands now come dearer than ever before in the history of family life, while lovers never were cheaper."