"I know her all the same. She's a good nurse. There are those who are and those who aren't. But she's got strength and poise and knows what she is about and is kind.—Those two women over there—"
"Yes. What do you make of them?"
"There's such a glitter of diamonds you can't see the women. Poor things!—to be beings of a single element—to live in a world of pure carbon—to be the hardest thing there is, and yet be so brittle too!... The woman next them is good ordinary: nothing remarkable, and yet pleasant enough. The worst that can be said of her is that she doesn't discriminate. If the broth lacks salt, she never knows it."
"And the two over there with the stout man?"
Rose Darragh gazed a moment with eyes slightly narrowed. "Oh, those!" she said. "Those are our adapted women—perilously near adapted, at any rate. That's a sucking wife and daughter. Take your premise that in the divine order of things the male opens the folds of his being, surrounds, encloses, 'shelters' and 'protects' and 'provides for' your female in season and out of season, when there is need, and when there is certainly none, and your further premise that the female is willing and ruthlessly logical—and behold the supremely natural conclusion!... Daughters of the horse leech—and perfectly respectable members of society as constituted! Faugh!—with their mouths glued to that fat man's pocket. He looks haggard, and at the moment he's probably grinding the faces of no end of men and women,—not because he's got a bad heart and really wants to,—but because he's got to 'provide' for those two perfectly strong and healthy persons in jewelry and orchids! He's cowed by tradition into accepting the monstrous position, and he's weak enough to let them define what is 'provision.' He's got to keep filling and filling the pocket because they suck so fast."
"Do you think they can change?"
"They can be forced to change. They don't want to change, any more than the copepod wants to change. And logically, while he persists in his present attitude, the man can't ask them to change. He can't keep his cake and eat it too." She drank her coffee. "That very stout gentleman who is being driven to bankruptcy, or to ways that are queer, is just the kind to strike the table with his fist and violently to assure you that God meant Woman, lovely Woman! to be dependent upon Man, and that it is with deep regret that he sees woman crowding into industry and beating at the doors of the professions—Woman, Wife and Mother, God bless her! Do you notice how they always put Wife first? If the Association Opposed to the Extension of the Franchise to Women asked him to-night for a contribution, they'd probably get it."
"How numerous do you think are those women?"
"The copepods? Numerous enough, pity 'tis! But not so numerous as, given the System, you might fairly expect: numerous positively, but not relatively. And a lot of them have simply succumbed to environmental pressure. Given a generation or two of rational training and a nobler ideal of what befits a human being, and the copepod will yet succour herself.... Denny and I see more of the other kind. The drudges outnumber the copepods, and neither need be.... There's a girl over there I like—the one with the braided hair. Many of the young girls of to-day are rather wonderful. It's going to be interesting to see what they'll do when they're older, and what their daughters will do. She's got a fine head—mathematics, I should think."