"Go on," she remarked in a cold, sweet voice that trickled down his back.
"Oh, well," he protested lamely, "when you marry for money you generally get it, don't you? But when you marry for love—it's like putting your last dollar on a long shot."
"If you mean there's a delightful uncertainty about it?" began the widow.
"There's nothing half so delightful," declared the bachelor, "as betting on a sure thing. Now, the man or woman who marries for money——"
"Earns it," broke in the widow fervently. "Earns it by the sweat of the brow. The man who marries a woman for her money is a white slave, a bond servant, a travesty on manhood. For every dollar he receives he gives a full equivalent in self-respect and independence, and all the things dearest to a real man."
"A real man," remarked the bachelor, taking out his pipe and lighting it, "wouldn't marry a woman for her money. It's woman to whom marriage presents the alluring financial prospect."
"Oh, I don't know," responded the widow, crossing her arms behind her head and leaning thoughtfully against the tree at her back. "In these days of typewriting and stenography and manicuring and trained nursing, matrimony offers about the poorest returns, from a business standpoint, of any feminine occupation—the longest hours, the hardest work, the greatest drain on your patience, the most exacting master and the smallest pay, to say nothing of no holidays and not even an evening off."
"Nor a chance to 'give notice' if you don't like your job," added the bachelor sympathetically.
"If the average business man," went on the widow, ignoring the interruption, "demanded half of his stenographer that he demands of his wife he couldn't keep her three hours."
"And yet," remarked the bachelor, pulling on his pipe meditatively, "the average stenographer is only too glad to exchange her position for that of wife whenever she gets——"