“But does he protect? Doesn’t he often desert?”
“In the annals of the gutter press he does,—I grant you that. Life, however, is something more than cheap sensationalism.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that!” and she raised her eyes, blue as blue cornflowers, full of a lovely earnestness. “Life is such a beautiful, holy thing!—and one feels such a desire to make it always more beautiful and more holy!”
The Philosopher got up one of his ugly noisy coughs. The Sentimentalist was becoming transcendental. He felt he must bring her down from the rainbow empyrean.
“There’s nothing beautiful or holy about it,” he grunted. “Life is life—two and two are four. A man is a man; a brute is a brute. Nature cannot be altered. If a woman’s unlucky enough to marry a brute instead of a man, she gets brutal treatment. Quite her own fault!—she should have known better!”
“But how is one to find out the difference between a man and a brute?” asked the Sentimentalist with an innocent air of enquiry.
He smiled—almost he laughed.
“Not bad!” he said. “I give you that! Not bad at all—for a woman!”
He walked up and down the room again, and finally resorting to his pipe, lit it.
“All the same,” he presently resumed, “even if your powers of perception failed to discern the brute in the man or the man in the brute, you ought to marry.”