"Yes; just as they will show off a child's tricks. Views and opinions are masculine things. Women are indifferent to them, really. Any set will do. I know the way a woman's opinions and interests change with her different husbands, if she marries more than once, is supposed to prove the vacuity of her mind. Half the satirists of women have made their reputation on that idea. It isn't so. It is that women can hold all opinions at once, or any, or none. It's because they see the relations of things which don't change, more than things which are always changing, and mostly the importance to men of the things men believe. But behind it all their own lives are untouched." "Behind.... What _is_ there behind, Miriam?" "Life." "What do they do with it?" "Live." "Mysterious, Miriam.... The business of women; the career; that makes you all rivals, is to find fathers. Your material is children." "Then look here, if you think _that_, there's a perfect instance. If women's material is people, their famous 'curiosity' is the curiosity of the artist. Men call it 'incurable' in women. Men's curiosity, about things, science and so forth, is called divine. There you are. My _word_." "_I_ don't, Miriam." "Shaw knows how wildly interested women are in psychology. That's funny.... But about children. If only you could realise how incidental all that is." "Incidental to what?" "To the _life_ of the individual." "Try it, Miriam. Marry your Jew. You know Jew and English makes a good mix." "You see I never knew he was a Jew. It did not come up until a possible future came in view. I _couldn't_ have Jewish children." "Incidents. Mere incidents." "No; the wrong material. I, being myself, couldn't do anything with it; couldn't be anything in relationship to it." "You'd _be_, through seeing its possibilities and making an atmosphere." "I've told you I'm _not_ one of those stupendous women." "What _are_ you?" "Well, now here's something you will like. If I were to marry a Jew, I should feel that all my male relatives would have the right to _beat_ me." "That's strange.... And, I think, great nonsense, Miriam." "And I'm not anti-semite. I think Jews are better Christians than we are. We have things to learn from them. But not by marrying them, until they've learnt things from us. Women, particularly, can't marry Jews. Men can marry Jewesses, if they like." "Marriage is a more important affair for women than for men. Just so." "I didn't say so." "You _did_, Miriam, and it's quite true." "It appears to be so because, as I've been trying to show you, men don't know where they are." "Your man'll know, Miriam. You ought to marry and have children. You'd have good children. Good shapes and good brains." "The mere sight of a child, moving unconsciously, its little shoulders and busy intentions, makes me catch my breath." "Marry your Jew, Miriam. Well--perhaps no; don't marry your Jew."