“And do you think,” asked Deborah, looking full at him with an expression of great scorn, “that that would be honorable conduct? You who know what an opportunity of marriage means to a girl in a country town?”
Godwin returned her look very straightforwardly.
“Isn’t that rather a low point of view to look at the matter from?”
“It is probably hers.”
“Well, that admission condemns you. For I decline to think that the well-being and happiness of a girl whose only aim in existence is to catch a husband by any means she can is of so much consequence as—well, as mine. Is that frank enough?”
Deborah was a little taken aback by this straightforward egotism.
“Then you must logically deny any sort of equality between men and women?”
“I do, emphatically. Women are our superiors or our inferiors, never our equals. And better education for them will not alter this fact; it will accentuate it.”
“Now you are running right away from the point, which is this. Is the inequality between the sexes so great that a man may jilt a girl for his own happiness without losing his right to be considered an honorable man?”
“Well, he loses the first freshness of his honor; but if he gets rid of a girl who could be nothing better than his housekeeper, to get one who will be, in the noblest sense of the word, his wife, he gains a great deal more than he loses.”