"Don't we know," he said, and made the limpid amber vanish in his pause. "Don't we know we've got to manage and control 'em--just as we've got to keep 'em and stand the racket of their misbehaviour? Don't our instincts tell us? Doesn't something tell us all that if we let a woman loose with our honour and trust, some other man will get hold of her? We've tried it long enough now, this theory that a woman's a partner and an equal; we've tried it long enough to see some of the results, and does it work? Does it? A woman's a prize, a possession, a responsibility, something to take care of and be careful about.... You chaps, if you'll forgive me, you advanced chaps, seem to want to have the women take care of you. You seem always to want to force decisions on them, make them answerable for things that you ought to decide and answer for.... If one could, if one could! If!... But they're not helps--that's a dream--they're distractions, gratifications, anxieties, dangers, undertakings...." Buzard got in his one effective blow at this point. "That's why you've never married, Sir Roderick?" he threw out. The big man was checked for a moment. Trafford wondered what memory lit that instant's pause. "I've had my science," said Dover. § 5 Mrs. Pope was of course among the first to visit the new home so soon as it was open to inspection. She arrived, looking very bright and neat in a new bonnet and some new black furs that suited her, bearing up bravely but obviously in a state of dispersed and miscellaneous emotion....