“Not enough to marry me?”
“Must we discuss that again?”
He got up, went out to the hall, pulled a book from his overcoat pocket, and returned.
“Would you care to hear what the greatest American says on the subject, Palla?”
“On the subject of marriage?”
“No; he takes the marriage for granted. It’s what he has to say concerning the obligations involved.”
“Proceed, dear,” she said, laughingly.
He read, eliminating what was not necessary to make his point:
“‘A race is worthless and contemptible if its men cease to work hard and, at need, to fight hard; and if its women cease to breed freely. If the best classes do not reproduce themselves the nation will, of course, go down.
“‘When the ordinary decent man does not understand that to marry the woman he loves, as early as he can, is the most desirable of all goals; when the 245 ordinary woman does not understand that all other forms of life are but makeshift substitutes for the life of the wife, the mother of healthy children; then the State is rotten at heart.