Keggo said very intensely, “But, Rosalie, if you only knew! With me it’s drink and you’ll say--. But I say to you, Rosalie, never, never let anything get the mastery of you. With me it’s drink and you’ll say that is a matter altogether different, with which parallels are not to be drawn. Oh, do not believe it, Rosalie. A woman should in all things be desperately temperate--watchfully, desperately temperate. A man--nearly every man--seems somehow to have his life and all his interests in compartments. He can be immersed in one while he is in it, and can get out of it and distribute himself over his others and close it and forget it. Rosalie, a woman can’t. Men have hobbies. They don’t have attachments; they have detachments. They detach themselves and turn to a thing and they detach themselves from it and turn back again. Rosalie, women don’t turn to a thing; they go to it. They don’t have hobbies, they have obsessions. They don’t trifle, they plunge. They cannot sip, they drain. It’s in their bone. They never would have occupied the place they do occupy if it were not that from the beginning they have given themselves over, or they were given over, to mastery. They are the weaker vessel. Rosalie, I tell you this, when a woman gives herself, forgets moderation and gives herself to anything, she is its captive for ever. She may think she can come back, but she can’t come back. For a woman there is no comeback. They don’t issue return tickets to women. For women there is only departure; there is no return.” Rosalie said, “Keggo, I think I could argue, but I won’t. But what I can’t imagine is the application of it in hundreds of cases--in by far the great majority of cases. Take mine. You’re not warning me, are you? I don’t see the possibility--” Keggo said, “Darling, I’m not warning you and yet I am. I am warning you because you are a woman; and because you are a woman you are susceptible to danger. It’s what I’ve said; it’s what I would have you remember for a day perhaps to come, that it is dangerous being a woman. I’m not warning you, because there’s nothing to--well, but isn’t there? You’ve got a theory of life and you are bent upon a career in life. There’s--” Rosalie cried, “Well, but there you are, Keggo. No comeback, no return tickets--well, I don’t want to come back; I don’t want a return ticket.” “You might. You never know. Suppose you ever did?” “But you can’t suppose it. Why ever should I?” “Suppose you wanted to marry?”