"Lydia is joking," said Janet, sending her clear, mollifying voice into the breach.
"No, I'm not joking," said Lydia, with the utmost gravity. She lit a cigarette, adding as she did so:
"I'm making hay while the sun shines."
"Does your husband agree with you on this point?" asked Janet, curiously.
"My dear, he's used to me. He takes my word for everything. Also my money. But I'm frank to say that I don't hold with Cornelia's notions about free love. They're too fantastic and impractical. I hold with the French system: Marry first and experiment afterwards. It's not logical, Janet, but it works well. If you experiment first, you are sure to be done out of marriage, and you may even be done out of love."
"Really, Lydia," said Cornelia, now thoroughly incensed. "You must know that Janet believes, as I do, that love is a surrender, not a sale. She isn't offering her affections to the highest bidder."
Janet, intervening, remarked that this was true; but, as she found Lydia's views very interesting, she begged Cornelia to let their visitor have her say.
"Oh, very well," said Cornelia, biting her lip.
"That's right, Janet," said Lydia Dyson, grateful for her support. "I'm sorry to disagree with Cornelia. But in this matter, she's all at sea. Believe it or not, in modern life, love is a commodity for sale, like any other commodity. What else can you expect? Do you know of any other gift in the possession of man, woman or child which is not sold to the highest bidder? Doesn't a playwright subdue his creative faculty to the requirements of the manager who offers the most royalties? Doesn't the novelist or the musician or the engineer do the same in his line? How indeed can they help it in a country where everything is bought and sold, where the greed and gluttony of men put everything under the hammer, from a glass of water to a draught of genius? Why marvel that women have to sell their bodies, when poets and artists have to sell their souls?"
"Take it from me, Lydia," Cornelia burst in, caustically, "when you apply the oratorical powers of Robert Lloyd to the moral principles of Mazie Ross, the product is hard to beat!"