“About 1100, I should have said.”
“Oh no,” Amory interrupted, “under Feudalism it would have been all right. It would have been proper to their stage of development. But—to-day! Or rather next April, I should say——!”
“The hands of the clock are to be set back in April?”
“So the doctor says. I dare say his rule-of-thumb carries him as far as that.”
“Awful impostors, doctors.”
Then Amory spoke slowly and impressively.—“What I want to know is, how much longer can Individualism last? We heard that American lady last year; would you have thought it possible that the system could have survived such a slashing attack? When will people begin to have even a rudimentary conception of the function of the State in these matters? When will they see, for instance, that when a dispute arises between a parent and a child the case is exactly like any other dispute, with the plaintiff on one side and the defendant on the other? If the parent’s the plaintiff, how can he speak for the defendant as well? Why, it’s making him judge and executioner and all the lot!... And those, Cosimo,” she went on, with still deeper gravity, into which contempt crept, “are my aunt’s and uncle’s ideas! Violence, harshness, and repression. Russianizing the Home, instead of abolishing it altogether, or only allowing it under the very strictest inspection, in such cases as when a parent has really proved his fitness for Child-culture! The Home!... Oh, when will the dawn come?” She turned up the pretty eyes to the sky; she spoke passionately. “Aunt Jerry fit to be a Mother of the Race! Why,” she broke out witheringly—“has she (to begin with the very elements) a notion of what to feed a child on? Does she know what a proteid is? Does she know what albumen is? Has she as much as seen a bit of yeast under the microscope? (I have; a girl once showed me.) Doesn’t she choose her very feeding-bottles out of these awful circulars of Dorothy’s or whose ever they are? And the clothes she showed us!... Ribbons, pink if it’s a girl and blue if it’s a boy! This hateful insistence on sex from the very beginning! From before the beginning!... And the pride of these people in their ignorance and conceit! Bursting with it!”...
Cosimo was awed. But he was glad, too, that there was no more talk about the end of their friendship. Amory was incomparable. Never had he honoured her so. It was almost a pity she painted, so magnificent a lecturer was lost in her. Not that just at present she was painting very much. She was doing better than painting. With all the strength of which she was capable she was resolutely not painting. She was laying strong and enduring foundations. There would be time enough for pinnacles by and by.
“And then,” Amory continued, more quietly, but even more stingingly, “in what spirit do they undertake this enormous responsibility? From the highest motive known to Ethics you’d think, wouldn’t you—the sense of Duty to Mankind? Yes, you’d think so. You wouldn’t think they’d regard it as a mere personal gratification, would you? You wouldn’t think they thought they’d accounted for it all when they said they were ‘in love,’ would you? But it is so, Cosimo. That’s exactly their mental development. They are exactly as advanced as the animals. Neither more nor less.... Mind you, I don’t deny what’s called ‘love’ altogether. I suppose it does serve some such purpose as the perfume does to the flower. The perfume attracts insects, and insects do fertilize some flowers. So love has its place. But what I want to know is, is it going to be allowed to supplant plain reason and common sense? I say no. There ought to be a State Mating-season. They can do it about fishing and game; why not about love? Because everything’s in the hands of men, and men think more about fishing and game than they do about these things. Oh, if only a Woman would arise! We should soon see all this altered!”...
“Well, you know I’m heart and soul with you about that, Amory,” Cosimo said, a little uneasily, as if he personally might be included in her arraignment of his sex.
“You!” said Amory, with an intellectually affectionate look of her golden eyes.... “If it weren’t for you, Cosimo, I should despair altogether. Nobody else understands me—nobody. The others—well, take a man like Hamilton Dix, who might be supposed to have higher interests: really, it’s as much as I’ve been able to do sometimes to keep him from pawing me! And once he did kiss my hand.... Cosimo”—she lifted the golden eyes almost bashfully, and then dropped them again—“I said last night that there ought perhaps to be an end of our friendship. Not an end, I mean, because I should always respect you and honour your views. And I still think it might be best. But—I don’t know whether I should have the strength to do it, Cosimo. I ought to, but—I’m only a woman in some things. I know they aren’t the real things, and it’s only because my sex has been downtrodden and we’ve been denied our opportunities; but we do have transmitted fears from those barbarous times when you used to drag us about by the hair. So I don’t know whether I should really have the strength, Cosimo——”