It's a remarkable social system that has no place for _us_!" the girl
went on, with her most charming laugh.
"No place in public. My plan is to keep you at home and have a better
time with you there than ever."
"I'm glad it's to be better; there's room for it. Woe to American
womanhood when you start a movement for being more--what you like to
be--at home!"
"Lord, how you're perverted; you, the very genius!" Basil Ransom
murmured, looking at her with the kindest eyes.
She paid no attention to this, she went on, "And those who have got no
home (there are millions, you know), what are you going to do with
_them_? You must remember that women marry--are given in marriage--less
and less; that isn't their career, as a matter of course, any more. You
can't tell them to go and mind their husband and children, when they
have no husband and children to mind."
"Oh," said Ransom, "that's a detail! And for myself, I confess, I have
such a boundless appreciation of your sex in private life that I am
perfectly ready to advocate a man's having a half-a-dozen wives."
"The civilisation of the Turks, then, strikes you as the highest?"
"The Turks have a second-rate religion; they are fatalists, and that
keeps them down. Besides, their women are not nearly so charming as
ours--or as ours would be if this modern pestilence were eradicated.
Think what a confession you make when you say that women are less and
less sought in marriage; what a testimony that is to the pernicious
effect on their manners, their person, their nature, of this fatuous
agitation.
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