“Dick, boy, it’s Laura Marholm Aaron’s been just reading. He can spout her chapter and verse.”
“And with all this talk about woman we have not yet touched the hem of her garment,” Graham said, winning a grateful look from Paula and Leo.
“There is love,” Leo breathed. “No one has said one word about love.”
“And marriage laws, and divorces, and polygamy, and monogamy, and free love,” Hancock rattled off.
“And why, Leo,” Dar Hyal queried, “is woman, in the game of love, always the pursuer, the huntress?”
“Oh, but she isn’t,” the boy answered quietly, with an air of superior knowledge. “That is just some of your Shaw nonsense.”
“Bravo, Leo,” Paula applauded.
“Then Wilde was wrong when he said woman attacks by sudden and strange surrenders?” Dar Hyal asked.
“But don’t you see,” protested Leo, “all such talk makes woman a monster, a creature of prey.” As he turned to Dick, he stole a side glance at Paula and love welled in his eyes. “Is she a creature of prey, Dick?”
“No,” Dick answered slowly, with a shake of head, and gentleness was in his voice for sake of what he had just seen in the boy’s eyes. “I cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. Nor can I say she is a creature preyed upon. Nor will I say she is a creature of unfaltering joy to man. But I will say that she is a creature of much joy to man— "