Page:Aaron's Rod, Lawrence, New York 1922.djvu/292

 "I'm not out—so I won't holloa," said Lilly. "But Del Torre puts it best.—What do you say is the way out, Del Torre?"

"The way out is that it should change: that the man should be the asker and the woman the answerer. It must change."

"But it doesn't. Prrr!" Argyle made his trumping noise.

"Does it?" asked Lilly of the Marchese.

"No. I think it does not."

"And will it ever again?"

"Perhaps never."

"And then what?"

"Then? Why then man seeks a pis-aller. Then he seeks something which will give him answer, and which will not only draw him, draw him, with a terrible sexual will.—So he seeks young girls, who know nothing, and so cannot force him. He thinks he will possess them while they are young, and they will be soft and responding to his wishes.—But in this, too, he is mistaken. Because now a baby of one year, if it be a female, is like a woman of forty, so is its will made up, so it will force a man."

"And so young girls are no good, even as a pis-aller."

"No good—because they are all modern women. Every one, a modern woman. Not one who isn't."

"Terrible thing, the modern woman," put in Argyle.

"And then—?"

"Then man seeks other forms of loves, always seeking the loving response, you know, of one gentler and tenderer than himself, who will wait till the man desires, and then will answer with full love.—But it is all pis-aller, you know."

"Not by any means, my boy," cried Argyle.

"And then a man naturally loves his own wife, too, even if it is not bearable to love her."

"Or one leaves her, like Aaron," said Lilly.

"And seeks another woman, so," said the Marchese.

"Does he seek another woman?" said Lilly. "Do you, Aaron?"

"I don't want to," said Aaron. "But—I can't stand by myself in the middle of the world and in the middle of people,