SYLVESTER. Another soul! She's also for equality. Her theory is, that girls should be boys, and maids should be young men. Goes in for latchkeys and that sort of thing. COLONEL [_throws down the book_]. Bah! [_Takes up a third._] "Naked and Unashamed--A Few Plain Facts and Figures--by Mary Bevan, M.D." Who on earth's she? SYLVESTER. One of the plain figures. _She_ comes to our house, too. COLONEL [_reads_]. "The Physiology of the Sexes!" Oh, this eternal babble of the sexes! [_Throws book down._] Why can't a woman be content to be a woman? What does she want to make a beastly man of herself for? SYLVESTER. But my wife isn't a woman. COLONEL. None of them are, my boy. A woman, who _is_ a woman, doesn't want to be anything else. These people are a sex of their own, Sylvester. They have invented a new gender. And to think my nephew's one of them! [_Strides up and down, seizes another antimacassar and flings it into another corner._ SYLVESTER. Oh, he's young. Don't despair! COLONEL. I don't despair! Do you suppose this folly can continue? Do you imagine that these puffed-up women will not soon burst of their own vanity? Then, the reaction! then will come _our_ turn! Mark my words, Sylvester, there'll be a boom in men! [_Rubbing his hands._ _Enter GERALD, door in flat._ GERALD. Good afternoon. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. [_Shakes hands with COLONEL._ COLONEL. Here you are, at last. GERALD [_shaking hands with SYLVESTER_]. How's Mrs. Sylvester? SYLVESTER. I was just going to ask you. You see more of her than I do. GERALD. We are collaborating. COLONEL. In the Higher Morality? SYLVESTER. How are you getting on? GERALD. Oh, we are only on the threshold. I finished the first chapter about daybreak. COLONEL. That's how you waste the precious hours of night? Gad, sir, when I was your age---- GERALD. That was thirty years ago. Things have changed since then. COLONEL. And they haven't improved. GERALD. That is a question. COLONEL. Oh, everything's a question nowadays! Nothing is sacred to a young man fresh from Oxford. Existence is a problem to be investigated; in my youth, it was a life to be lived; and, I thank Heaven, I lived it. Ah, the nights _I_ had! SYLVESTER. Would it be impertinent to inquire upon what subject my wife is engaged? GERALD. Our subject is the Ethics of Marriage. SYLVESTER. Of my marriage? GERALD. Of marriage in the abstract. COLONEL. As if people married for ethics! There is no such thing, sir. There are no ethics in marriage. GERALD. That is the conclusion at which we have arrived. COLONEL. You are only on the threshold, and yet you have arrived at a conclusion? GERALD. So much is obvious. It is a conclusion to which literature and the higher culture inevitably tend. The awakened conscience of woman is already alive to it. COLONEL.