“Yes, but the holy martyr’s fire will have burned out for want of something to feed on. Your interests will be more diverse, at least, your minds less concentrated. Men have time to fall in love, you may have observed. You’ll all begin to look about.”
“I doubt it. We’ve been through too much ever to be quite like other women.”
“Nonsense, Julia, nonsense. You can’t get ahead of Nature. She may take a back seat for a time, but she, being really unhuman, never sleeps. She watches her chance and the moment it comes she gets her fine work in. She hits good and hard, too; all the harder because she appropriates to herself some of the vengeance of the Lord.”
“That’s a man’s reasoning, but it is beside the question as far as I am concerned. Insane people live forever.”
“Have you any prejudice against divorce?”
“Rather not. One of the first things we accomplish is a reform of the unjust divorce laws of this country. But I doubt if even women will consent to the divorce of the insane. It can be done in only one or two states of your own country.”
“True. But a marriage can be annulled if it is shown that one of the parties to the contract was insane at the time of marriage.”
“Marriage can be annulled on the same ground here, but not without more horrors of detail than any woman who had lived with a man for eight years would care to suffer.”
“A simple statement would be enough in Reno—why do you laugh?”
“I have heard of Reno before.”