Gilbert looked up in slow surprise. “Well, mother doesn’t like Mrs. Iverson, as you may imagine. She calls her that ‘dreadful, immoral woman.’ And you know what mothers are. She’s carefully picked out a girl for me. Plenty of money, and influential family relations. But the girl annoys me: she is one of the clinging, sentimental sort. I don’t think I could stand her as my wife.”
“Why—why are you marrying?” said Image slowly. Gilbert had evidently consulted his mother, or at least listened to her counsels. In some way Image was old-fashioned in his ideas of what is due to a parent, but he had never held it right that a mother should select a wife for her son.
“Why?” Gilbert knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “Well, I think it is about time.”
“I see.” Image looked again at the photograph. Gilbert was only marrying because “it was about time.” What were the eager dark eyes asking for? Only for that? “You don’t believe in having any sentiment about choosing one’s life partner?”
“Oh, yes, of course. I’ve just told you the girl my mother has picked out would annoy me no end. I like Claudia very much. Only she is in a bad set, though it doesn’t seem to have affected her. As a matter of fact, her mother has hardly had any intercourse with her. She has none of the domestic virtues, you know. As far as one can see there is no taint there, but—well, its a serious responsibility to marry the daughter of a Circe. And people talk so much about heredity and eugenics——”
“My dear boy,” said Image heatedly, “love snaps its fingers at heredity and pulls a long nose at eugenics. To the devil with them, I say. It’s too much talk about these things that makes people so anæmic these days. If you love a woman, take her in your arms and keep her there. A good woman won’t want to go far astray. But keep her in your arms. Don’t put them round her once and hold her tight till she says ‘yes’ and then loosen hold. Most Englishmen deserve to lose their wives.” Image spoke with such warmth that Gilbert smiled.
“A champion of woman!” He took the photo from Image. For the first time a tinge of warmth crept into his voice. It may have been caught from Image. “She is handsome, isn’t she?”
“No, I do not stand up as a champion of women. I would not dare to do such a thing. But, thank God, I was brought up to love and respect women and to think that they needed protection and guarding. And men are all the better for the responsibility.”
“Women nowadays resent guarding and protecting. They’ve changed while you’ve been away.”
“Nonsense, I don’t believe it. They resent bullying and spying and the things that are done under the name of protection. They may pretend to like guarding and protecting themselves, but it’s because their men-folk are such incompetent slacksters. You modern lovers, what you miss in life! Don’t be a fool, Gilbert. You are in love with her, aren’t you?”