“Of course, if I hadn’t thought it all out in time, I should bring them up first. But I feel sure the time will come when every self-respecting woman will want to be the author of her own income—when no girl will marry until she is.”
Mr. Jones looked and felt like the fisherman who has gone out in a sail-boat to catch the small edible prizes of the sea, and landed a whale.
“You never thought that all out for yourself,” he growled. “Where did you get it, anyhow?”
“Last night I realized that I had been learning unconsciously for years, and remembered everything worth while I had ever heard men and women talk about. After all, you know, clever men do talk to me.”
“Clever men are always fools about a pretty face.”
He got up and moved restlessly about the large room, too full of furniture for a man with big feet, and long awkward arms which he did not always remember to hold close to his sides. He longed for his punch bag. Ishbel smiled and looked out of the window.
“What in hell’s come over women?” he demanded. “I thought they only wanted love when they talked of happiness.”
“Oh, you’re like too many men—have got your whole knowledge of women from novels. Perhaps you even read the neurotic ones that are having a vogue just now. Wouldn’t that be funny! We women want many things besides love, we Englishwomen, at least; for we belong to the most highly developed nation on the globe. And we are the daughters of men as well as of women, remember. And we have heard the affairs of the world discussed at table since we left the nursery. That man doesn’t realize what he has made of us is a proof that he is so soaked in conventions and traditions that he is in the same danger of decay and submergence that nations have been when too long a period of power has made them careless and flaccid—and blind. We want love, but as a man wants it; enough to make us comfortable and happy, but not to absorb our whole lives —”
“What?” Mr. Jones swung round upon her, his little black eyes emitting red sparks. “That’s the most immoral speech I ever heard a woman make.”
“I shall keep faith with you,” said Ishbel, carelessly. “Don’t worry yourself. I’ve made a bargain with you and I shall stick to it, just as I shall be perfectly square in business. All I want is to be as much of an individual as you are, not an annex.”