"What's his rush?" Pete asked. "Or is Ricky just being impetuous?" "No," Tom said. "There's a reason for it. Graves has got to make his arrangements soon, so he's been putting the pressure on for us to decide quick. If we don't decide tonight, we are apt to be left out." "Oh?" Pete's voice was noncommittal. "What do you think of it?" Tom asked. "Should we take her in or not?" "Well, I don't know," Pete stalled. "The reasons why we should are pretty obvious. It will solve some of our worries if we do. What are the reasons why we shouldn't?" "I don't know," Tom said. "It just seems wrong to me. Seems like we'd be giving up too much of our ... well, our ideals. Maybe I'm being old fashioned, but it just seems immoral to me, somehow." Pete leaned against the window frame. "You mean it's like marrying a woman for her money? Sort of gigolo-like?" Tom nodded. "Yes, I guess that's it," he said. "I suppose what's bothering me is that the idea of the clan is to make the family the same thing as the economic unit; but this seems like it's being too damn economic about it, too mercenary. It just doesn't seem right." Pete said nothing for a long moment while he meditated. "Well, that's one way of looking at it," he said, finally. "But on the other hand, maybe you got to stop and think this thing through. Why is it bad to marry a woman for her money? It occurs to me that a monogamistic marriage of that sort is bad--and I think it probably _is_ bad--because it inevitably leads to living a lie. You got to fool the woman, because otherwise she doesn't get anything out of the marriage. If the marriage is to mean anything, both the man and the woman have got to get out of it some sense of belonging; that's what the marriage is for. Now the man may get the belonging, the security, from the money. But the wife--she can't get anything out of it unless he can fool her. She's already got the money, so that doesn't mean anything to her; and she's got what the money can buy. "Unless he can fool her into thinking that he really loves her for herself alone, she doesn't get anything at all out of it. So, he's got to fool her. And the worst of it is that, if he doesn't succeed, she'll walk out on him with her money; then he'll lose what he's after, too--so he's got good reason for being afraid. The situation is necessarily unstable; it's almost bound to lead to grief of one kind or another. So, that kind of a marriage is bad." "Why's this any different?" Tom asked.