“But they don’t do it better. They’re as messy an’ uncomfortable as they can be when there ain’t no woman to look after ’em.”
“Not if they get good pay for keeping themselves and other people tidy. Look at Wen Ho.”
“Oh,” said Joan, “that ain’t properly a man.”
Prosper laughed out again. It was good to be able to laugh.
“I’ve known plenty of real white men who could cook and wash better than any woman.”
“But—but what is a woman’s work?”
Prosper remained thoughtful for a while, his head thrown back a little, looking at her through his eyelashes. In this position he was extraordinarily striking. His thin, sharp face gained by the slight foreshortening and his brilliant eyes, keen nose, and high brow did not quite so completely overbalance the sad and delicate strength of mouth and chin. In Joan’s eyes, used to the obvious, clear beauty of Pierre, Gael was an ugly fellow, but even she, artistically untrained, caught at the moment the picturesqueness and grace of him, the mysterious lines of texture, of race; the bold chiselings of thought and experience. The colors of the room became him, too, for he was dark, with curious, catlike, greenish eyes.
“The whole duty of woman, Joan,” he said, opening these eyes upon her, “can be expressed in just one little word—charm.”
And again at her look of mystification he laughed aloud.
“There’s—there’s babies,” suggested Joan after a pause during which she evidently wrestled in vain with the true meaning of his speech.