She asserted that she had no ill-will for Percival Houghton, who would always be the one man in the world for her. After all, he had sold his birthright for a marriage of convenience, and he might well feel that he ought to stick to his bargain, cost what it might. She was persuaded that his coldness to her in London was merely an iron vizor clamped upon his real feelings by the ruthless institution of matrimony. She also appeared to derive some comfort from the thought that though he was "a soul pirate," though he had "stolen her soul," his own had been damned in the process. "Yet I shall always love him," she said, with tragic resignation. "I shall never love anyone else. And I shall never marry. I’ve suffered enough from marriage as it is." The ferryboat docked at the Lackawanna Station. Janet, who had been lost in a reverie, mechanically followed her companion’s suggestion that they take the same boat back. Cornelia’s story—the vivid story of one of the principals—had a very different coloring from the account of the "affinity Houghton" scandal which had filled the front pages of the evening newspapers two years ago. Janet could still recollect the headlines, the pictures, and the expansive gossip; also the strange mixture of curiosity and pious disgust with which she had followed the reports. Could the horrified Janet Barr of that dimly remembered time be the same girl who was now sitting in the closest intimacy beside the leading female in the case? On the return across the river, Janet had several questions on the tip of her tongue, but Cornelia’s manner seemed to discourage inquiries of a too personal kind. However, Janet did get in: "What was Percival Houghton’s excuse for refusing to see you once more?" "He said we could meet only in secret; but that any continuation of the secrecy was more than he could endure." "Do you think that excuse rings true?" "Why not? I suppose I should say it rings falsely true, as faith unfaithful always does." "I think it was the evasion of a coward." "Perhaps. But, Araminta, _all_ men are cowards, moral cowards, I mean. They face bullets sublimely, but they shiver and shake before an argument. They gayly lose their lives for a hunting trophy or a football triumph, but they can’t bear to lose their dinners for a belief." Janet, thinking of her father, was inclined to agree with this view. "Is that why men let women keep up the marriage system?" "My dear, it isn’t the women who keep up the marriage system. It’s the men! Women just fall into a system that’s ready made for them. Most women are all body and no soul. Give them the choice between marriage, which provides for the body while starving the soul, and some other condition which provides for the soul while starving the body, and of course they’ll choose marriage. They prefer to hold a man by his lusts rather than by his spiritual impulses. But the men keep the system up, my dear. Because of the children they want."