her? Did he regret that they were
tied together? No, curiously enough. It was high time he got married;
she would do as well as another. She had beauty, youth, amiability,
physical charm for him. There was advantage in the fact that her
inferiority to him, her dependence on him, would enable him to take as
much or as little of her as he might feel disposed, to treat her as the
warrior must ever treat his entire domestic establishment from wife down
to pet dog or cat or baby. . . . No, he did not regret Josephine. He could
see now disadvantages greater than her advantages. All of value she
would have brought him he could get for himself, and she would have been
troublesome--exacting, disputing his sway, demanding full value or more
in return for the love she was giving with such exalted notions of its
worth.

"You are married?" Galloway suddenly said, interrupting his own speech
and Norman's thought.

"Yes," said Norman.

"Just married, I believe?"

"Just."

Young and old, high and low, successful and failed, we are a race of
advice-givers. As for Galloway, he was not one to neglect that showy
form of inexpensive benevolence. "Have plenty of children," said he.

"And keep your family in the country till they grow up. Town's no place
for women. They go crazy. Women--and most men--have no initiative. They
think only about whatever's thrust at them. In the country it'll be
their children and domestic things. In town it'll be getting and
spending money."

Norman was struck by this. "I think I'll take your advice," said he.

"A man's home ought to be a retreat, not an inn. We are humoring the
women too much. They are forgetting who earns what they spend in
exhibiting themselves. If a woman wants that sort of thing, let her get
out and earn it. Why should she expect it from the man who has
undertaken her support because he wanted a wife to take care of his
house and a mother for his children? If a woman doesn't like the job,
all right. But if she takes it and accepts its pay, why, she should do
its work."

"Flawless logic," said Norman.

"When I hire a man to work, he doesn't expect to idle about showing
other people how handsome he is in the clothes my money pays for. Not
that marriage is altogether a business--not at all. But, my dear sir--"
And Galloway brought his cane down with the emphasis of one speaking
from a heart full of bitter experience--"unless it is a business at
bottom, organized and conducted on