"We've always done that more or less, and nobody ever could stop us, from the Garden of Eden on. In the future, one thing is sure: a lot of women will go wrong, as the saying is, under the new conditions, with liberty and their own money and all. But, good Lord! millions of women went wrong in the old days! The first books of the Bible tell about all the kinds of wickedness that we know to-day. Somebody complained that with all our modern science we hadn't invented one new deadly sin. We go on using the same old seven--well, indecencies. It will be the same with women. It's bound to be. You can't keep women unfree. You've simply got to let them loose. The old ways were hideous; and it's dishonest and vicious to pretend that people used to be better than they were, just as an argument in favor of slavery, for fear they will be worse than the imaginary woman they put up for an argument. I fancy women were just about as good and just about as bad in old Turkey, in the jails they call harems, as they are in a three-ringed circus to-day. "When the old-fashioned woman went wrong she lied or cried or committed suicide or took to the streets or went on with her social success, as the case might be. She'll go on doing much the same--just as men do. Some men repent, some cheat, some kill themselves; others go right along about their business, whether it's in a bank, a church, a factory, a city or a village or anywhere. "But in the new marriage--for marriage is really changing, though the marrying people are the same old folks--in the new marriage a man must do what a woman has had to do all along: take the partner for better or worse and no questions asked." He humored her heresy because he found it too insane to reason with. "In other words, we'll take our women as is." "That's the expression--_as is_. A man will take his sweetheart 'as is' or leave her. And whichever he does, as you always say, oh, she'll get along somehow." "The old-fashioned home goes overboard, then?" "That depends on what you mean by the old-fashioned home. I had one, and it could well be spared. There were all kinds of homes in old times and the Middle Ages and nowadays, and there'll be all kinds forever. But we're wrangling like a pair of lovers instead of getting along beautifully like a pair of casual acquaintances." "Aren't we going to be more than that?" "I hope not. I want a place on your pay-roll; I'm not asking for a job as your wife." "You can have it." "Thanks, but I have another engagement. When I have made my way in the world and can support you in the style you're accustomed to, I may come and ask for your hand." Her flippancy irked him worse than her appalling ideas, but she grew more desirable as she grew more infuriating, for the love-game has some resemblances to the fascinating-sickening game of golf. She did not often argue abstrusely, and she was already fagged out mentally. She broke off the debate.