“Of course it’s a pity, but what can you do? You can’t know what people are like unless you live like them, and then the question is whether the game is worth the candle. I should like to know how you manage in Altruria.”
“Why, we have solved the problem in the only way, as you say, that it can be solved. We all live alike.”
“Isn’t that a little, just a very trifling little bit, monotonous?” Mrs. Makely asked, with a smile. “But there is everything, of course, in being used to it. To an unregenerate spirit—like mine, for example—it seems intolerable.”
“But why? When you were younger, before you were married, you all lived at home together—or, perhaps, you were an only child?”
“Oh, no indeed! There were ten of us.”
“Then you all lived alike, and shared equally?”
“Yes, but we were a family.”
“We do not conceive of the human race except as a family.”
“Now, excuse me, Mr. Homos, that is all nonsense. You cannot have the family feeling without love, and it is impossible to love other people. That talk about the neighbor, and all that, is all well enough—” She stopped herself, as if she dimly remembered who began that talk, and then went on: “Of course, I accept it as a matter of faith, and the spirit of it, nobody denies that; but what I mean is, that you must have frightful quarrels all the time.” She tried to look as if this were where she really meant to bring up, and he took her on the ground she had chosen.
“Yes, we have quarrels. Hadn’t you at home?”