“He might be rather interesting.”
“He is all of that.”
“After all, Margaret, it is rather hard on some of these men. I’ve seen it before. They suddenly have so little of their wives to themselves. It affects them like the income tax. They hate to give up so large a share of their property.”
“To a government they distrust. That’s it with Gage. He doesn’t mind Helen doing any amount of music. But he hates all kinds and forms of modern feminism. Thinks it’s shameless and corrupting.”
“It is pretty shameless and sometimes a little corrupting. There’s a lot in the man’s point of view that you never saw, Margaret. They’re fighting for themselves of course but they’re fighting for the sex too. It’s all right, too. Man is, I sometimes think, the natural preserver of sex. Women get along very well without it, or with enough of it to decently populate the earth. But men are the real sentimentalists. A woman’s ruthless when she begins to houseclean her sentiments. A man never likes to throw anything away, you know, according to the tradition. He doesn’t like to throw away sex. He’s used it badly, spotted it up and all that—in his lucid moments he’ll even admit it. But none the less it’s very often the one thing which can excite his tenderness and reverence and when he sees us invade the home, as he says, it isn’t that he’s afraid the dishes won’t get washed. He says that, but what he is afraid of is that we’ll find the secret places of his sentiment and ravish them. I’m awfully sorry for some of the men. They’re going through a lot just now. They seem to feel so left out, under all their loud jocosity and foolish talk—you know,” she ended a little weakly.
“I know. I’ve been sorry for Gage myself. Terribly sorry for him. But I don’t see how one can make concessions. What I’m afraid of is that in his bitterness he’ll break Helen down. And she might give in but she’d never forgive him now.”
“You’ve done some speedy work, haven’t you? Smashed up homes and everything. What happened to your own pet Sinn Feiner?”
“He’s lecturing somewhere or other.”
“Is that all off?”
“It never was on.”