“I never am; I have got a latch-key, and so wake nobody when I come in. But are you not yourself sometimes engaged of an evening?”
He shook his head, his teeth shining good-humouredly in a friendly smile.
“You know perfectly well that there is not an assignation I would not set aside to spend an evening with you. To me, friendship is a boon far rarer and far more precious than love.”
“I do not hold with you at all. I have enough of the cold consideration granted me by the world.”
Stephen smiled again.
“There is no help for it, Janka,” he said. “Men of our times are too weakly to love an all-around woman: the very thought of one gives them an unpleasant shock. The day for types of women so extremely complex as you are has now gone by; at present women are preferred who display some very distinct and special characteristic: especially either primitive natures, or such as have been depraved by civilization; or types of spirituality or of sensuality; women either of very well-balanced minds, or nervous even to hysteria; or, again, those in whom warmth of heart or a distinguished bearing prevails. And that is why the monogamic instinct is now dying out completely: in a few years’ time, it will be no more.”
Wiazewski was on the war-path, the topic being a favourite one of his.
“For how can a man be true to his wife, if he takes her ‘for better, for worse, ... till death do them part,’ only, let us say, to kiss a mole that she has on her neck, just under her left ear? Monogamy requires exceedingly strong, rich, abundant natures.”
“Then it would follow that our near future would witness our return to the hetairism of primæval times?”
“No doubt; for both the primitive instincts of the senses, and their ultra-refined activity, have identically the same result.”