ld hold a
separate work for her."

"Oh, you do not care. You are too selfish to feel any responsibility
for a woman's soul. I would feel depraved if I did not guard my wife's
soul by my very faith in her."

"Why should you guard her soul? Isn't the average woman intelligent
enough to look out for herself? What she does, she does because she
wants to, and for Heaven's sake, man, let her have the right to freedom
of being."

"But real freedom of being lies in her dependence on me as the head of
the house," Philip protested.

"If you happen to be the head of the house," Lawrence added jestingly.

"But I would be the head of the house. It is my right and my duty."

"Poor Mrs. Ortez, if there ever is one," Lawrence continued, joking.
"She is to be guarded by a great, aggressive, possessing husband. What
if she happens to want something you don't approve of?"

"She won't. A good woman doesn't."

"But suppose your woman isn't good, and does?"

"I should have to explain to her her mistake."

"And then when she says, 'But I don't regard it as a mistake, I think it
was quite right,' what will you do?"

"I wouldn't have a woman who would hold such views."

"What is it you want for a wife, Philip? A brainless feminine body who
is content to be your slave?"

"I should be ashamed to speak of any woman I cared for in those terms.
One doesn't marry a woman who can be thought of in terms of sex."

"Perhaps 'one doesn't.' I would. I should want her to be very well aware
of her exact physical potentialities, and to think enough about them to
understand herself."

"Then you would want an unwholesome wife, my friend."

"Not at all. I want a natural one, that's all. Moreover," he added
joyously, "I shall have one."

Philip glanced at him quickly. Into his mind flashed the memory of
Claire's words in the room that fatal afternoon.

"I shall never marry such a woman," he declared, and added: "But I mean
to have one whose devotion is so pure that even her talk to me of such
things will be holy."

Lawrence laughed heartily.

"Philip," he said, still chuckling, "you seem to think we human beings
are half supernatural and half stinking dirt. Why, in Heaven's name,
don't you once see us as plain, healthy, intelligent animals?"

"Because we're half gods, half beasts."

"So I was once told by the son of an ancient mind whose farthest mental
frontier reached A.D. 1123."

Philip rose and faced Lawrence, then looked shamefa