"Go easy, Dad," warned Lewis.
"I'm going to, Boy," said Leighton. "You hear a lot of talk to-day on the shortcomings of marriage as an institution. The socialists and the suffragists and a lot of other near-sighted people have got it into their heads that we've outgrown marriage." Leighton puffed at his cigar. "Once I was invited out to dinner, and had to eat cabbage because there was nothing else. That night I had the most terrible dream of my life. I dreamed that instead of growing up, I was growing down, and that by morning I had grown down so far that, when I tried to put them on, I only reached to the crotch of my trousers. I'll never forget those flapping, empty legs."
Lewis smiled.
"You can smile," went on Leighton. "I can't, even now. That's what's happened to this age. We've outgrown marriage downward. Your near-sighted people talk of contractual agreements, parity of the sexes, and of a lot of other drugged panaceas, with the enthusiasm of a hawker selling tainted bloaters. They don't see that marriage is founded on a rock set deeper than the laws of man. It's a rock upon which their jerry-rigged ships of the married state are bound to strike as long as there's any Old Guard left standing above the surge of leveled humanity."
"And what's the rock?" asked Lewis.
"A woman's devotion," said Leighton, and paused. "Devotion," he went on, "is an act of worship, and of prayer as well as of consecration, only, with a woman, it isn't an act at all. Sometime perhaps H lne will talk to you. If she does, you'll see in her eyes what I'm trying to tell you in words."
"And—Folly?" said Lewis. His own pause astounded him.
"Yes, Folly," said Leighton. "Well, that's what Folly lacks—the key, the rock, the foundation. The only person Folly has a right to marry is herself, and she knows it."
Lewis sighed with disappointment. He had been so sure. Leighton spoke again.
"One thing more. Don't forget that to-day you and I—and H lne, received Folly here as one of us."