"What was Percival Houghton's excuse for refusing to see you once more?"
"He said we could meet only in secret; but that any continuation of the secrecy was more than he could endure."
"Do you think that excuse rings true?"
"Why not? I suppose I should say it rings falsely true, as faith unfaithful always does."
"I think it was the evasion of a coward."
"Perhaps. But, Araminta, all men are cowards, moral cowards, I mean. They face bullets sublimely, but they shiver and shake before an argument. They gayly lose their lives for a hunting trophy or a football triumph, but they can't bear to lose their dinners for a belief."
Janet, thinking of her father, was inclined to agree with this view.
"Is that why men let women keep up the marriage system?"
"My dear, it isn't the women who keep up the marriage system. It's the men! Women just fall into a system that's ready made for them. Most women are all body and no soul. Give them the choice between marriage, which provides for the body while starving the soul, and some other condition which provides for the soul while starving the body, and of course they'll choose marriage. They prefer to hold a man by his lusts rather than by his spiritual impulses. But the men keep the system up, my dear. Because of the children they want."
"But, Cornelia, I thought it was the women who wanted children!"