“My dear man, love should be born in reverence, and if later it develops into infatuation—well, I suppose that would be quite all right, since in that case infatuation would be the natural, normal outgrowth of love—the apotheosis of it. If you marry Maisie Morrison—look here, Dan, you say you do not love her——”
“I’m not certain, Mel.”
“Then it is a fact that you think a very great deal of her. You have the utmost respect for her, you are happy in her society, you feel reverent toward her.”
“Of course I do.”
“Then, you star-gazing jackanapes, marry her and become infatuated with her afterward. She can’t reach out and grab you and maul you and paw you over and kiss you and whisper love words to you—like this child of nature, Tamea. It’s up to you to do that, Dan. How are you going to discover Maisie’s possibilities to compete with this passion-flower, Tamea, unless you uncover them yourself? You’re a weak, cowardly sort of man where women are concerned. I grow very weary of you, my friend. You want to eat your cake and have it.”
Dan laughed long and pleasurably at his old friend’s outburst. “You’re such a comfort to me, Mel,” he declared. “I dare say you are right. I’m cowardly. But then, one shouldn’t take even the most remote chance when he marries. Marriage is until death.”
“Death sometimes comes early to some married men, and it is welcome. If you marry Tamea you will die spiritually long before the breath leaves your carcass and the doctor signs a death certificate authorizing your burial.”
“What a gloomy picture you paint!”
“Marrying an exotic woman like Tamea—a half aborigine—is like marrying any other aborigine, because all aborigines are pigmented. And no matter how transcendent the beauty of a pigmented aborigine—or half-breed aborigine—that beauty fades early. They degenerate physically and mentally. They are old at thirty, repulsive at forty, hags at fifty.”
“Nonsense! Educate Tamea, spread over her the veneer of civilization, teach her how to play, cultivate her voice, dress her exquisitely, and who shall say of her, ‘You—you—are half aborigine’?”